


The Boy

by Valkyrien



Series: What's Unexpected Should Never Come As A Surprise [2]
Category: The Avengers (2012), Thor (Movies)
Genre: 'I Do What I Want' Is Not A Valid And Acceptable Excuse In Sigyn's Book, AU, Being Barely-An-Adult Is Exhausting And Confusing, But Who Do You Turn To When YOU'RE The Sassy Gay Friend?, Except For When He Does, Fierce Females FTW, Frigga's C+ Parenting Now With Extra Credit Option, How Anyone Copes With It Is A Mystery, Like Walking Blindly Through A Desert As Someone Feeds You Chocolate While Robbing You, Loki Is Incapable Of 'Casual' Relationships Of Any Kind, M/M, No One Knows Why Loki Does Any Damn Thing Not Even Loki Himself, Odin's A+ Parenting, Overbearing Brother-Types Complicating Life FTW, Previously Unconfronted Issues, That Awkward Moment When No One Really Knows What's Going On But Everyone Wants To Think They Do
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-11-17
Updated: 2013-04-12
Packaged: 2017-11-18 21:54:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 34,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/565695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Valkyrien/pseuds/Valkyrien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Like anyone else his age who has never really fitted in and has reached that difficult transitionary stage between neglected, awkwardly-grown child, and embittered, damaged almost-adult, Loki does his utmost to dissociate himself with everything going on around him, and he's well aware of what he's doing. That doesn't stop Sigyn forcing him to look at his life and choices and make something of the ones that aren't complete bullshit and fuckery, and it certainly doesn't prevent Loki from becoming involved in something he never envisioned happening to someone like him with someone he barely knows who isn't so much making Loki play by the rules as he goes along with Loki's way of doing things as he is gradually showing Loki how to do things unconventionally without disregarding all the bits that make doing it at all worthwhile and good.</p>
<p>Maybe Loki should have considered the consequences of his actions more thoroughly before diving headfirst into something he can't accept being all too ready for because it might be good for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. It's Not Unusual

**Author's Note:**

> This is going to be one side of a story that will be fully presented in a series. The two sides will run parallel to one another although not necessarily in a chronological fashion. One side will focus on Loki, the other on Steve. Loki's chapters will usually be the ones that are not chronological, because Loki's just contrary like that.
> 
> Essentially, in the course of deliberate and experimental irresponsibility and acts that are part 'I Do What I Want' and part self-destruction, Loki meets Steve and falls into a relationship with him that is as difficult to define and as hard to pin down as Loki is himself. To someone as emotionally damaged and complex as Loki, this is of course something of an adjustment and both helps and hurts. Throw in mutual passion, previously unconfronted issues, and an inability on both sides to correctly address either thing at the right time in the appropriate way, and you get a surprisingly private kind of drama.

 

 

 

   ”The boy’s back,” she says with a smile in her voice, and Loki sighs, mostly because he’s really biting back a snapped _’he’s not a **boy’**_ , but a little because he was so sure he’d run that not-a-boy off by now and this persistence is starting to wear at him.

 

 

   “Ignore him,” he instructs instead, pointedly not looking up to where Sigyn is gleefully looking towards the table at which sits the boy – _not-a-boy-at-all-a-proper- **man**_ Loki reminds himself irritably – with what Loki knows will be a becoming flush on his face and clever hands engaged in something artistic, because Loki has seen it before and has no desire to see it again. None whatsoever. Absolutely not.

 

 

   “You know he comes for you,” Sigyn admonishes, and Loki smirks, a sharp, thin thing on lips poised to say something very hurtful, but instead all he says is,

 

 

   “Yes, I know. I already told you how prettily he came for me that night. I even showed you the charming thank-you card he sent. I don’t doubt that’s why he’s here all the time now,” rather sarcastically, and Sigyn shakes her head a little sadly.

 

 

   “I know you’ve grown fond of the idea, but I really don’t think he’s _this_ persistent because you give fabulous head. And that thank-you card was the sweetest, most awkward thing ever. Judging by that alone I’d say he was infatuated with you,” she says, and Loki huffs.

 

 

   “No, judging by that alone we can surmise that I was the first person to ever perform that particular service for him, and that he’s been raised astonishingly well. Nothing more can be taken from it,” he insists, and Sigyn just sighs.

 

 

   “If that’s what you’ve decided. I still think you’re being a fool.”

 

 

   It’s not until she’s turned away and Loki’s field of vision is solely books and shelves once more that he breathes deeply and reminds himself that he doesn’t actually care for her opinion on the matter of sweeter-than-sweet blue-eyed not-boys whom Loki services orally at parties he never originally wanted to attend and then send him adorably awkward thank-you cards with Loki’s name spelled correctly and not a hint of vulgar language anywhere to be found even though the main subject of the card itself is rather difficult to reference without resorting to such things.

 

 

   Loki doesn’t care if these not-boys with wide, innocent eyes and hitching stammers to their softly polite voices return to Loki’s library again and again for more than a month and always only when Loki is the one on duty, always to sit at the same table within viewing distance of the front desk, and always with something interestingly artistic to work on. Never to speak to Loki, but always to cast long looks after him with a faint blush dusting a pleasingly handsome face, and of _course_ Loki has no reason to care for any of this.

 

 

   The not-a-boy doesn’t stay for Loki’s entire shift, whether out of some understanding that it would be a little bit unsettling for Loki if he did, or because he actually has somewhere else to be – perhaps even plans to go off and moon over someone else, Loki could not possibly say and in any case he is not interested in such speculation – but he _does_ linger a little longer in the door than usual, a slight frown making blue eyes shine sadder than Loki has yet seen, and despite himself Loki looks straight at him, meeting his eyes for the first time since the first day he appeared in the library after their little interlude and the card, and Loki has to work not to ask questions with his own eyes and to simply observe.

 

 

   In the end, the frown disappears and a tentative but brilliant smile replaces it, and Loki feels somewhat flattered that a simple acknowledgment from him can have such effects, but the boy-who-isn’t-a-boy-at-all doesn’t just smile, he waves as well - a funny, awkward, sweet little gesture like an excitable child catching itself in an overly enthusiastic display of emotion - and Loki doesn’t know how to counter it because he has no suitable weapon in his arsenal for something so simple and innocuous but simultaneously loaded, and so Loki raises a hand but keeps it too close to his body and in the end he merely smoothes back his hair as if he meant to do so all along.

 

 

   Either this is enough, or Loki’s absolutely-not-a-boy knows more than Loki likes to imagine, for the smile grows and the pleased blush staining his cheeks as he ducks out of the door to leave is the fieriest version Loki’s seen on his face yet barring the one he’s only seen while looking up from a semi-uncomfortable kneeling position on the floor of a bathroom in a house he hadn’t meant to be anywhere near upon the evening in question.

 

 

   Loki almost privately decides he likes it before he remembers that he doesn’t care.

 

 

   Loki has neither the time nor the energy to care. Not these days.


	2. Denial Isn't So Much A River In Egypt As It Is An Unhealthy Coping Mechanism

 

 

 

   “Your boy’s looking a little run-down,” Sigyn murmurs as she deftly attaches a new identification sticker to a book’s spine, and Loki fails to snap at her that he doesn’t _have_ a _boy_ and that the **_man_** _-damn-it_ in question isn’t _Loki’s_ by any stretch of the imagination because regrettably he can’t help shooting a quick and furtive look at the certainly-not-a-boy’s usual table to observe slightly pallid flesh and bruised under-eyes and slumped shoulders where Loki is used to seeing a healthy glow and bright blue sparkles and marvellous posture, and Loki doesn’t know he’s frowning until he feels his face twist and then he has to exert effort to smooth it over again, because it’s none of his business what library-goers look like.

 

 

   Loki tells himself that this holds true even though he sometimes _does_ notice what library-goers look like and reasons that he cannot be held to it not being his business when he actually knew what this particular library-goer usually looks like before he was a library-goer at all.

 

 

   “Could be that flu everyone seems to be getting. He should be at home in bed, poor thing, not hanging around here waiting for you to open your eyes and realise what’s going on right in front of you,” Sigyn continues, somewhat huffily, and Loki lifts his hands from the keyboard of the laptop he’s using to catalogue the books being re-issued identification stickers, and massages his temples carefully in an effort to restrain both his temper - which is no shorter than it usually is, making it still quite a bit shorter than most people would deem good - and the tension headache simmering behind his eyes.

 

 

   Loki doesn’t notice that Sigyn has set out on a course of base treachery and mutinous fraternisation until he registers unusual movement in the portion of his peripheral vision that just so happens to encompass the not-a-boy’s table and glances up briefly to see Sigyn place a glass of water in front of the admittedly somewhat peaky-looking library-goer-who-is-in-no-way-a- _boy_ and strike up what looks like a semi-awkward conversation.

 

 

   Loki seethes in a manner that some might call impotent and considers taking immediate and drastic action against Sigyn for this betrayal – he knows her well, it would be no great feat to take her down a peg or two – but he is quickly reminded that Sigyn for all her flaws cares deeply for Loki and that Loki would do well not to give her reason to reconsider the life decisions that have led to this affection in view of the numerous perks it has proven to have.

 

 

   Loki is not at all distracted from his vengeful musings by the bright smile on the not-a-boy’s face and the flush of embarrassment which Loki observes with a twinge of recognition that could almost be termed ‘fond’ if Loki felt any such thing for people whom he is only very casually carnally acquainted with.

 

 

   The matter of the cataloguing of which books require a re-issuing of identification stickers is conveniently just exactly pressing enough that Loki finds himself able to completely ignore Sigyn’s shameless approaching of the certainly-not-a-boy – let that be her punishment for now, that Loki can hardly muster the interest in her treacherous doings to observe them in full – but Loki does raise his head briefly from the task when she returns to his side. Sigyn does not pick up another book, but instead simply stands there, looking at Loki for a good moment as though weighing him by some private, internal set of scales, and she reaches out to briefly press her fingers to Loki’s arm in a gesture she has not utilised before when she has finished this odd new process.

 

 

   “I don’t understand you,” she says, a little sadly, and Loki shrugs.

 

 

   “You know me better than most,” he tells her, although whether that’s any comfort he doesn’t really know – it could be taken either way.

 

 

   “You’re really set on not accepting this, aren’t you?” she asks, and Loki doesn’t reply.

 

 

   A flash of glass in light has caught his eye and he is watching the unquestionably-not-a-boy’s throat work around a mouthful of water. Loki wonders whether the effect would have been similar had their positions been reversed during their brief encounter, and then can’t help but wonder whether the mechanics would play into it as well as the differences in skin tone and the angle, and he finds himself musing on what the not-a-boy would have to say for an answer if Loki asked for an analysis of the scene from an artistic perspective – Loki’s seen the things he does while in the library, he’s sure the answer would be engaging if it wasn’t preceded by the untimely demise of the not-a-boy from sheer mortification.

 

 

   “He seems really sweet,” Sigyn continues, and Loki thinks that ‘ _sweet_ ’ is a good word for it, but that it does not define Loki’s experience or his recollection of this definitely-not-a-boy. Instead, Loki thinks of words like ‘ _unexpected_ ’, ‘ _close_ ’, and ‘ _soft_ ’, and his lips want to smile but he doesn’t let them.

 

 

 


	3. Give Me A Finger And I'll Drag You Into The Deep To Examine The Whole

 

 

 

   “I wonder if he’s finally seen sense and that’s his boyfriend...” Sigyn murmurs, and Loki rolls his eyes and refuses to look in the direction in which she is raptly but subtly gazing.

 

 

   “He’s handsome. They’d be a cute couple.”

 

 

   Loki declines to comment, and Sigyn sighs.

 

 

   “If that _is_ his boyfriend I hope you’ve learnt something from all this. You have to take these chances where you find them, Loki. It doesn’t have to lead to anything, but you’ll never know if you don’t give things a chance, and – oh.” Loki glances up at her when she fails to continue her lecturing, and sees her frown, then look relieved and smile almost fondly.

 

 

   “Not his boyfriend, then,” she says with a pleased sort of lilt to her voice, and Loki casts a quick scanning look around to see a handsome young man with a pleasant smile holding the hand of a pretty young woman with immaculately applied red lipstick, the most-certainly-not-a-boy standing rather awkwardly with them as if he’s not quite sure where he fits into the picture, and Loki feels a fluttering sort of recognition for the look on his face, except he’s never seen him look like that before so Loki’s not sure what’s causing the feeling exactly.

 

 

   “Poor thing. It’s tough being a third wheel,” Sigyn comments, and Loki bites back an acidic remark.

 

 

   “Still, it’s nice to see he has friends, at least.” Loki contents himself with an eye-roll, and does not respond to her. Instead, he sets off for one of the far corner rows to check that the book he just saw someone replace was indeed replaced in the correct manner.

 

 

   The fact that it's the far corner and he won't have the option of even a slight _peripheral_ view of what currently holds Sigyn's attentions is nothing more than a happy coincidence. Loki doesn't have time to speculate on the personal relationships of people he doesn't know but who might know someone Loki knows only by sight and taste and not really even to talk to. There are more than enough other things Loki could speculate upon that are much more important and relevant, and if actually speculating upon those things is precisely what Loki _doesn't_ want to do, well then there's always immersion in the familiarity of the tasks at hand and the comforting smell of books and the low rush of pages being turned and people breathing steadily and the odd cough or pencil-scribble-scratch in between.

 

 

   He just about manages to avoid having a fit when he sees just how poorly the book in question's been replaced, but reminds himself that it’s bad form to track down patrons and batter them about the face and neck with heavy tomes about long-deceased playwrights, so it’s unfortunate that the soft,

 

 

   “Excuse me,” from just behind Loki startles him to the point where he turns with the book in hand and nearly takes out one of the not-a-boy’s lovely blue eyes. They both flinch in time and injuries are avoided, but the near-miss fires Loki’s ever-ready temper and he reaches for a harsh word to fling but doesn’t get any further than opening his mouth because the blue eyes widen and the not-a-boy says,

 

 

   “I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean to – ” and before Loki knows what he’s doing he’s managed to say,

 

 

   “It’s alright,” and, irritatingly, finds he means it.

 

 

   “I just – ” but Loki doesn’t hear what he ‘just’ because the friend calls and the golden head turns and a deeply regretful look crosses the face of the absolutely-not-a-boy, and with another apology, quieter this time, he follows his friends to and out of the door, and Loki just stands there, wondering whether he’s angry because they were interrupted - Loki _hates_ it when people interfere in his business – or because now Loki needs to know what ‘just’ means, because Loki can’t stand open-ended sentences and half-revealed information, not without finding the continuations and the parts that weren’t revealed to begin with.

 

 

   He stands there until Sigyn approaches, hissing a,

 

 

   “ _Well?_ What did he say?” and Loki just hands her the book that almost damaged a face he’s now consumed with thoughts of, and says,

 

 

   “Nothing. Not enough.”

 

 

   Loki has better things to do than replace library books and stave off introspective examinations of his personal choices. There was a return address on that thank-you card he's got hidden at home where no one but him could ever find it to wonder over it.

 

 

 


	4. Mistakes Have Been Made - Others Should Be Blamed

 

 

 

   Loki has Steve’s address, written neatly on the back of the envelope Loki remembers steaming open over the kettle the morning it arrived while he made tea and pondered all the both delicious and unbearable reasons why he could be receiving a letter at all.

 

 

   He keeps it safely hidden away with various other things he has no intention of anyone else but him ever seeing again, and now and then, as with some of the other items, he takes it out to look over and feel again what it made him feel upon first seeing it.

 

 

   A letter sent to the wrong address in handwriting he did not recognise, and not sent on by post but hand-delivered here, _here_ where he thought he was safe from that address and all it holds and has held, and he remembers feeling that awful, aching _loss-anger-pain_ sensation as he traced the ink with his fingers – that did not shake or tremble – and then the fear.

 

 

   Loki traces the ink again and recalls the beating of his own heart too quick for his ears and the furtive look at Sigyn’s back as she ate her breakfast at the kitchen table, the thought that she might have done this to him, that she might have allied with another to perpetrate this, and then of course the way she had sensed – _as she always does_ – his distress and turned, and risen to comfort him and reassure him that no, she had not betrayed him and no, she did not know wherefrom the letter originated **_but why don’t we open it together and see it’s probably nothing don’t worry._**

 

 

   Loki slides the letter from the envelope gently, his fingertips once more enjoying the richness of the paper that has been used, and the part of him that cannot be suppressed and which has always loved such things simply _thrills_ at such a _touch_ , and he recalls Sigyn’s fingers joining his in the task that first morning, and now can’t help but feel that this private pleasure is made all too public by that fact even as he is grateful to her for her closeness and her interference because he knows too well that fear is more frightening when one fears alone.

 

 

   He re-reads the words more than once because it pleases him – the same part of him that enjoys the feel of the paper is simply enamoured with the _gesture_ of receiving such a thing, a letter written purely to inform Loki that some part of his existence is appreciated by someone, and while it’s not proper vanity, it still makes him smile and if he were looking in a mirror he might catch himself preening a little out of the corner of one eye.

 

 

   It appeals to him as proof of his actions on a completely separate level. That here is evidence of his doings and comings and goings as recorded by one who has **_noticed,_** at least to some extent, is gratifying to Loki in a way that he can’t and won’t attempt to describe but which Sigyn would probably recognise in him quite easily, and he thinks this may be more a part of why he keeps the thing than the pleasing thought that he provided a service with some skill.

 

 

   He likes the wording, however much he receives the distinct impression that here is a person who would rather have expressed their meaning via a different medium, and Loki can appreciate the effort to ignore selfish ease and preference in order to provide the clearest picture of a thing to another. The ability and will to do so is quite a skill and speaks of a sort of patience Loki finds sadly lacking in most people, and of course it teases him with the notion that perhaps here is also a mind which, like his own, prefers to keep something back.

 

 

   Loki knows all about how revealing a passion can hand others the tool to pry one wide open and gorge themselves on everything that makes one up as a person. It is neither a wise nor an easy thing to hand over and it should not be done freely.

 

 

   However superficially it may appeal, Loki also likes the signature, likes the curve of it, likes the safety and familiarity of the start, and although _certain people_ must never know for absolute certainty that they will become insufferable, Loki enjoys the echoes of comfort he finds in that sameness.

 

 

   It’s not quite the same sort of comfort he finds in trembling artist’s hands in his hair or the wildly pounding heart beneath his ear somewhere safe inside a chest that nonetheless is fragile and easily invaded, but it’s a similar sort to the kind he finds in a ready embrace when he somehow manages to feel lost in his own kitchen and the softness in exasperated gazes he sees by his side in the library and in the warm scent of apples and amber he catches on a flick of loosened hair moving through his apartment.

 

 

   Sigyn knows Loki has kept the letter. Loki wonders if perhaps _Steve_ thought Loki might.

 

 

   In any case no one knows better than Loki that it is always good to be prepared, even for things one does not think one will want, and so Loki has kept the letter with the return address and also a little note with a series of numbers on it that he has had since the day of the letter arriving, and which is really what he is after.

 

 

   It is the work of only a moment to dial the numbers and wait for the voice on the other end to confirm that he has reached the,

 

 

   “ _Rogers household_ ,” and Loki thinks it’s marvellous what a sense of security and familiar surroundings can do for confidence and how that shines through in a voice, and waits for the,

 

 

   “ _Who’s calling?_ ” to let the other person know that,

 

 

   “This is Loki. I wish to speak to Steve.”

 

 

   There is a pause and a sound as if the phone is being fumbled or moved without real coordination, and then Loki hears,

 

 

   “ _That’s – that’s me_ ,” although Loki already knew this was the case but nevertheless is glad to have it confirmed.

 

 

   “Good,” he says, and means it, and then reminds Steve that,

 

 

   “You never finished your sentence. You just..?”

 

 

   “ _Have you had my phone number this whole time?_ ” is the line of conversation which Steve seems rather more interested in pursuing, however, and Loki decides that his inflection should be ever so slightly smug when he says,

 

 

   “I have,” more or less just because he wants to see how Steve will react to this.

 

 

   “ _...huh. Okay_.” Steve does not disappoint, and Loki smiles and forgets not to fiddle with the ends of his hair because Sigyn’s not home right now and anyway she’s wrong and Loki _doesn’t_ look like some 90’s teen-drama extra when he does that while on the phone.

 

 

   “What was it you were saying to me earlier?” Loki prods, unwilling to deviate too far from his original reason for calling, and there is a pause in proceedings as Loki hears what he thinks could be Steve moving to another room.

 

 

   “ _I just wanted to say hello_ ,” Steve says finally, and Loki frowns. This is not what he has been expecting.

 

 

   “That’s it?” he needs to be sure, and the pause this time is a little more weighted, slightly more uncomfortable.

 

 

   “ _That’s it_ ,” Steve confirms, and Loki chances a look in the mirror and is dismayed to find that he is pouting. He quickly changes his expression to blank neutrality and decides to ask,

 

 

   “Are you certain?”

 

 

   “ _I wanted to talk to you. I thought it might help to start somewhere easy so I went for saying hello_ ,” Steve shares, and Loki secretly wishes he could see the second the attitude entered his voice because he’s certain Steve must have some pricelessly amusing expression to accompany that very particular tone he’s taking with Loki right now.

 

 

   “Why do you want to talk to me all of a sudden?” Loki needs to know, because he hates that Sigyn could be right and that it could just be because it’s awkward being a third wheel.

 

 

   “ _I always wanted to talk to you,”_ the way Steve says it seems to imply that Loki’s missing something and that’s not acceptable. Loki doesn’t miss things.

 

 

   “So why do it in front of your friends? You spend more than enough time in the library, you could have spoken to me any day,” Loki points out, and is gripped by the sudden sensation that if he were doing this anywhere near Sigyn she’d currently be pinching him for what she terms _‘unnecessary meanness’._

 

 

   “ _You were always right next to **your** friend. I thought maybe you wouldn’t like it if I did it when she was standing right there_ ,” Steve says reasonably, and Loki is thrown for a brief moment.

 

 

   It can’t be true. Steve doesn’t seem the type to lie like that but everyone lies for personal gain, Loki knows this, it’s a fact of life, and no one considers the feelings of others so carefully when they have no real reason to do so, therefore Steve must be lying because why would he bother to put any thought and effort into approaching Loki if he’s wanted to do it for a while now?

 

 

   It doesn’t make sense. There has to be something wrong with the picture and all Loki can see is the option Sigyn gave him. Maybe Steve got tired of being shown up by his friends and just wanted to make a point that he’s perfectly capable of social interactions too. Maybe he’d already told his friends that he knows Loki – after a fashion, anyway – and that’s why he chose that moment.

 

 

   It’s deeply annoying that Loki can’t immediately pick out exactly what Steve’s motives were and are, and Loki’s tolerance for that feeling is not what anyone would call _‘high’_.

 

 

   “So you picking that moment had nothing at all to do with the presence of _your_ friends,” he says flatly, quite sure that he’s conveying how little he believes that explanation.

 

 

   “ _Why would it have anything to do with them?_ ” Steve asks, and Loki grits his teeth against the sincerity of the innocence in that question.

 

 

   “Oh, there could be a number of reasons. For instance, you might have told them that our paths have crossed before. I can’t possibly know whether you divulge that sort of thing to the people around you. They could have demanded proof of your word on the matter. People do all sorts of things,” Loki says in what he means to be a matter-of-fact way but which instead just comes out slightly sarcastic. Clearly he needs to take up speaking to people again. Nuance is everything, it would be just tragic if he became one of those awful people whose only weapon is sarcasm.

 

 

   “ _But it’s not their business,_ ” Steve says slowly, and Loki finds himself involuntarily charmed by how clearly scandalised Steve is by the suggestion that he might have spread this all over town while at the same time he’s too polite to let Loki know that he’s a little put out that Loki’s mind turned that way at all. Loki’s so used to that kind of reaction to his thinking that he’s almost immune to it by now, but he still thinks it’s rather endearing that Steve never saw it in him.

 

 

   “Some people really would not care. Others would ensure it became their business. I was simply wondering what your motive was,” he states.

 

 

   “ _I... I guess I just felt good about the moment_ ,” Steve tells him, and Loki frowns.

 

 

   “I see.” He doesn’t really have anything further to add because he’ll be damned if he admits that in actuality he doesn’t see and has no idea what the hell that means and would dearly love to pry it out of Steve so he can examine it in full, but he doubts that he could bring himself to do that at all.

 

 

   “ _Are you mad at me? For talking to you, I mean_ ,” Steve asks, and Loki is momentarily baffled.

 

 

   “No,” he says, the honesty stunned out of him before he can reconsider it,

 

 

   “Why would I be?”

 

 

   “ _I... Because... You don’t owe me anything. I was – I didn’t come talk to you earlier because I wasn’t sure if that was okay and I didn’t want to... impose._ ”

 

 

   “...oh.”

 

 

   There is a silence that could be considered awkward if Loki weren’t so busy trying to figure out what he’s thinking and feeling that he doesn’t have time to notice what sort of silence he isn’t filling.

 

 

   There’s nothing he can think to say that isn’t frightening or has no potential unpleasant final outcome and that in itself is upsetting because saying nothing probably isn’t good either and Loki isn’t used to being this unsure and hesitant about acting and speaking - his bridge-burning habit is one of the things Sigyn claims is aging her before her time and he’s never doubted his own instincts and decisions to this extent, not like this.

 

 

   Loki always has a plan, always knows what’s going to happen and what’s going on behind the scenes so he can act without having to worry that there are consequences he might have to face that he wasn’t aware of and isn’t prepared to accept.

 

 

   He refuses to believe that one of the traits he’s relied on the most throughout his life has been compromised and he can’t quite ignore the rising panic that this is another thing that’s been taken from him or damaged without his consent and his throat constricts at the thought.

 

 

   It takes a second or two for the anger to take the helm and readjust the emotional course, but although it hurts less than the fear and he can breathe normally again, his strongest urge in this instant is to throw the phone through the window and move to another country just to be safe.

 

 

   He doesn’t have time to be shocked that he’s not the slightest bit interested in verbally destroying Steve Rogers, even though he’s technically the closest human being to Loki right now and lashing out is Loki’s default setting whenever this sort of change in temper happens, because Steve’s soft voice registers and interrupts the impulse.

 

 

   “ _I won’t bother you anymore, I promise,_ ” he’s saying, and Loki bites his lip to prevent himself from saying something he can’t be sure he won’t regret later.

 

 

   “You aren’t,” he settles on.

 

 

   “Really. It’s fine.”

 

 

   “ _Great!_ _I mean – I mean good, I’m glad, I – I’m glad._ ”

 

 

   Loki hasn’t noticed but he’s en route to Sigyn’s room and has shut the door behind him before he has a chance to reconsider it. He feels slightly better leaning his forehead against the doorframe until Steve tentatively says,

 

 

   “ _Do you... Would you mind if I... If I talked to you sometime?_ ”

 

 

   There is an irregularity in the paintwork covering the raw material of the wall right in front of Loki’s eyes which looks ever so slightly like a kidney. It holds no answers, so Loki is forced to breathe deeply and provide a reply of his own.

 

 

   “I’m not sure... that’s... a good idea...”

 

 

   He wishes he wasn’t in Sigyn’s room. Even the lingering scent of her perfume and the pile of neatly folded laundry at the end of her bed seem to be berating him.

 

 

   “ _Oh. That’s... Okay. That’s not... I won’t, then._ ”

 

 

   Loki feels exactly how awkward this silence is. It distracts him from all the other horrible things he’s feeling.

 

 

   “Steve,” he manages after twenty seconds, and Steve’s voice is a little odd-sounding when he replies,

 

 

   “ _Loki?_ ” and Loki knows he can’t tell him what he wants to tell him because there’s nothing in those lines that will help or make this better or be less awful because he can’t help but enjoy the way Steve says his name, how he pronounces it perfectly, and it reminds Loki of how pleased he was when he got the card and saw that Steve had spelled his name right, how simple a pleasure that was.

 

 

   Loki wishes he were as selfish as people think he is.

 

 

   “I’m – ” **_the problem, always the problem_**

 

 

   “I really am sorry. Honestly.”

 

 

   “ _It’s okay. It was nice to hear from you,_ ” Steve says quietly, and this time the sincerity is painful but no less endearing.

 

 

   “Thank you,” Loki tells him, and means it to cover a wide range of things that he can’t articulate.

 

 

   “ _You too. I’ll – I’ll see you around._ ”

 

 

   Loki is almost surprised by the click and the dial tone letting him know that Steve’s hung up on him, partly because he’s trying to decide whether there was a promise in the defiant solidity of Steve’s voice before he did.

 

 

   He still hasn’t decided on that when Sigyn comes home and finds him curled up on her bed, raw eyes closed against the world. She doesn’t ask any questions until later after he’s had a nap and taken a shower, and even then all she does when he tells her is fold him into a hug. He falls asleep with his head in her lap and her fingers in his hair.

 

 

   She doesn’t mention it in the morning.

 

 

   Loki's not sure he wishes she wouldn't.

 

 

 


	5. Well Begun Is Half Done, They Say

 

 

 

   “Loki, we need to talk,” Sigyn says two days later over breakfast. Loki continues to stare dully at his toast and she sighs.

 

 

   “Honey, if you won’t go to therapy and get this out of your system, you’re going to have to put up with me trying to sort it out with you, you know that’s how it works. I told you when you moved in. I can’t watch you do this to yourself.”

 

 

   “I’m not doing anything,” he protests, but it lacks energy and he doesn’t look at her.

 

 

   “That’s exactly the problem. You’re not doing anything. You’re consciously choosing not to make decisions that would in all likelihood be good for you, and that’s not healthy,” she tells him.

 

 

   “That’s not an action it’s an omission,” he mumbles, and she pushes back her chair and moves towards him.

 

 

   And he forgets.

 

 

   Loki rises so quickly he ends up tangled in the table and hits the floor in a painful heap, and he hears her yell his name but he’s not really seeing her and he can’t even push her away when she kneels down next to him and pulls him into her arms, rocking him and telling him to breathe.

 

 

   He can’t hear himself cry, all he can hear is her voice.

 

 

   When he’s calmed down a few minutes later, he curls himself around her and holds on tight, and she kisses his hair.

 

 

   “ _I love you, you’re okay, it’s okay, we’re fine, calm down_ ,” she repeats, and he relaxes slowly, enough for her to change the words to,

 

 

   “You know I’d never hurt you, I’d never let anyone hurt you, it’s alright now, I promise,” and he believes her because she means it and she always has.

 

 

   Eventually he lets her pick him up off the floor and put him on the sofa, and he responds when she asks him whether he’s badly hurt from landing the way he did.

 

 

   Bruise ointment is applied to his elbow and he drinks the cup of tea she makes him. He just lies there when she puts a blanket over him and a few minutes later he can hear her on the phone in the background. He can’t hear what she’s saying but she sounds calm. It’s not a very long phone call.

 

 

   When she rejoins him she sits in front of his sightline on the coffee table and strokes back his hair gently.

 

 

   “Loki can you hear me?” she wants to know, and he makes a soft sound but can’t open his mouth to let it out because his face feels stiff and cold and he doesn’t want to let that feeling creep into him and banish the slight aftertaste of warmth.

 

 

   “You’re alright,” she tells him,

 

 

   “But I’ve made an appointment for you for tomorrow. I’ll take you there and wait until you’re done, and then I’ll bring you back home.”

 

 

   He manages another little noise and she smiles.

 

 

   “Good. If I make you another cup of tea could you drink it for me?”

 

 

   He nods minutely, and she leans in and kisses his forehead.

 

 

   “I’ll be right back,” she promises, and he closes his eyes and hears her footsteps, sees in his mind where she is and what she’s doing. It’s familiar and reassuring and his hands twitch.

 

 

   When she comes back she helps him sit up and lean against her, and he sips tea carefully while she holds him. By the time he’s halfway done he feels up to trying a real word.

 

 

   “Sorry.”

 

 

   “You don’t apologise for those things, you know that. We’re okay,” she insists, and he breathes in the comforting scent of her hair.

 

 

   “Still,” he mumbles, and she pulls him a little closer.

 

 

   When he’s done with the mug she takes it from him and rearranges them both so he’s lying across her legs.

 

 

   “I love you,” he needs her to hear, and she keeps running her fingers through his hair slowly, soothingly.

 

 

   “I love you too. That’s why it’s so hard for me to accept this. Tell me what’s bothering you. Talk to me,” Sigyn encourages, and Loki lets the focus of his eyes slide a little until the lines of her knee and those of the armchair across from them blur together.

 

 

   “I’m tired,” he says quietly. The words themselves exhaust him even further but he grasps for something more to offer and ends up with,

 

 

   “I can’t be anything to anyone. I _can’t_.”

 

 

   “You’re Loki. That’s all you have to be,” Sigyn tells him, and Loki closes his eyes against the burning.

 

 

   “I don’t want to,” he whispers, and she doesn’t reply.

 

 

   “I don’t need you to be anything else,” she says after a minute or so,

 

 

   “I doubt your boy does either. And if anyone ever does want you to be something else then they can go to hell, the unappreciative bastards.”

 

 

   Loki’s unwilling laugh is more of a sob and it hurts all the way through his chest.

 

 

   “Loki.”

 

 

   He says nothing but she knows he’s listening.

 

 

   “You don’t have to be afraid. If you don’t trust yourself not to be or to make the right choices, that’s fine. You’re only human. Just try not to take things away from yourself before you’ve let yourself have them. Make a decision anyway. If it turns out to be a bad one, we can fix it.”

 

 

   “You can’t fix _me_ , Sigyn.”

 

 

   “Of course not,” she says promptly,

 

 

   “But I can help clean up when things get messy and I can help you when things go wrong. No one’s asking you to be perfect, sweetheart, that would be ridiculous. All I’m asking is that you let yourself live.”

 

 

   “I don’t know how to,” Loki cries, and she lets him. She’s been letting him since they were children and she was the only one who’d believe him when he told her how he was hurting.

 

 

   “I can’t do it, I can’t let anyone see this,” he sobs, and he knows that she knows that he’s not just talking about the weeping or the panic or the inability to open up to anything beyond a fairly basic home routine with the occasional recreational deviation carefully planned and chosen to create the fewest ripples on the surface of a cup that’s been running over for so many years now that when he finally decided to go right ahead and empty it himself, he didn’t do a very good job and now all that’s left are a few fat, irregular droplets still clinging to the bottom and sides.

 

 

   “I know,” she repeats, and she does.

 

 

   She knew before either of them could do a thing about it and when it really went to shit and everyone else claimed not to have seen it coming she was the only one who stood up and called them on it.

 

 

   “Why can’t I just be happy?” he demands to know – not just of her, of everything – but his voice is mangled by the tears and muffled by her leg and there are so many hitches and sobs clinging to the words that they’re almost indecipherable. Still Sigyn hears them.

 

 

   “You will be,” she promises,

 

 

   “We’ll get there. We’ll make it happen. It’ll come.”

 

 

   She’s been saying that for years because she’s not willing to let him believe that there are other options. The last time Loki tried to find other options didn’t end well. She still hasn’t forgiven the world for it, and Loki knows that but all he can dare to feel on the subject is an immensity of gratitude he’s never felt for anything else that she doesn’t blame _Loki_.

 

 

   “I’m tired of waiting,” Loki rasps,

 

 

   “I’m so tired of everything...”

 

 

   The convulsive sobs peter out into harshly pronounced breaths, and Sigyn carefully wipes his face and tucks his hair behind his ear.

 

 

   “I know, sweetheart. You can rest for a while, it’s alright. I won’t leave you,” she promises.

 

 

   “Thank you.”

 

 

   He doesn’t need to ask whether she’ll stay right here where she is because Sigyn’s had both their lifetimes to learn his language and she’d never make him translate into anything else when he’s this far under the current.

 

 

   He listens to her breathing and ignores his own but eventually the two align.

 

 

   A few hours later when he wakes up, she hasn’t left him, but he can feel the book she’s reading propped up on his shoulder. It’s not important though. What’s important is that the first thing he says when he opens his mouth to speak is,

 

 

   “... I think he’s a good person.”

 

 

   Sigyn rubs the nape of his neck and hums agreement.

 

 

   “I think so too,” she affirms.

 

 

   For a little while, that can be enough. Loki collects himself. She knows he needs to. Only then does she ask,

 

 

   “Is that why you chose him?”

 

 

   Loki finds he still has no real answer for that but it’s okay and he can let a preliminary one form while he waits, that’s acceptable.

 

 

   “I needed...” It’s a false start so he tries again. _From the beginning_ seldom works with Loki but sometimes it’s a push he requires from which to build.

 

 

   “You know why I went there,” he reminds her, and she murmurs assent because she doesn’t forget these things.

 

 

   “And I felt...” _disconnected, afraid, vulnerable, **help me**_

 

 

   “...open.”

 

 

   Sigyn knows exactly what connotations that word, that feeling has for Loki, so he doesn’t need to explain it further, but somewhere hidden inside him, behind the comfort of not needing to strip himself bare to lay down the meanings for another person, he wants to understand whether that’s helping or hurting.

 

 

   “He was helpful. I...”

 

 

   Loki isn’t actually sure what he did. He doesn’t think he **_used_** Steve – _or maybe he just doesn’t want to think that he did_ – but if not that then what?

 

 

   “Was it the control?” Sigyn asks quietly, and he considers it.

 

 

   It feels slightly more right than _using_ does, but he remembers wide, kind blue eyes and can’t define it like that.

 

 

   It wasn’t vulnerability but it _was_ helpless, only not helplessness itself, and Loki thinks of what he wanted to _do_ to him, what he _did_ do.

 

 

   Loki thinks of being completely in control by virtue of being the only one of them who lacked virtue, of an act he felt compelled to commit which nevertheless left Loki with all the power of the situation at his disposal, and he wonders how to explain what he _wanted_ and what he _got_.

 

 

   Loki didn’t _take_ anything.

 

 

   “It was... I felt...”

 

 

   Loki felt everything and nothing. He still does.

 

 

   “...closer.”

 

 

   “Did it help?” Sigyn asks, and Loki has to consider that as well, because he isn’t sure.

 

 

   “... it helped. I...”

 

 

   The pause lengthens and Sigyn asks,

 

 

   “Was it different?”

 

 

   “Yes,” Loki replies immediately, relieved at an answer he doesn’t have to search for, and then,

 

 

   “But not in the way I expected.”

 

 

   “And was that good or bad?” Sigyn prompts.

 

 

   “It was... _I_ was... Still.”

 

 

   Loki likes the word. It describes the feeling nicely, because it isn’t emptiness and it isn’t full of sensation, it exactly contains everything he wasn’t in that moment.

 

 

   “Calm? Happy?” Sigyn asks, and Loki weighs them against each other and against the remembered silence in himself and sighs,

 

 

   “No. Still.”

 

 

   “Loki, that’s a good thing,” Sigyn tells him, and he supposes she would know, trusts that she can tell by his tone and words and everything she knows about him and see what’s there.

 

 

   “It was,” Loki agrees, because here nuances mean nothing and if something isn’t bad then it has to be good. What’s between is nothing but confusion and doubt and Loki has no room for any more of either.

 

 

   “Do you think you would like to, if you could feel that again?” she wants to know, and Loki touches the edges of remembered being.

 

 

   “I would.”

 

 

   It’s true.

 

 

   “You can have that,” Sigyn assures him, and his eyes sting.

 

 

   “I can’t,” he denies, because that’s true as well.

 

 

   He can’t and even if he could he can’t let himself and he _knows_ he can’t because he spoiled it and there are no real second chances in this life.

 

 

   “You can. It’s open to you. It’s an option. You have the ability to make a choice and I can tell you that it’s a choice that will almost definitely benefit you.”

 

 

   Loki can’t let her be right because he doesn’t know what to do with ‘almost’ even though he knows there are no certainties for anything so ‘almost’ is always true.

 

 

   “Loki. You can have this. You _should_ have this. You deserve it. They can’t take this away from you – _haven’t_ taken this away from you – but the only one who can give it to you is yourself. You’re capable of that if you choose to be.”

 

 

   He turns his head to look up at her, and her eyes are as loving and accepting as always.

 

 

   She won’t make him do this. She won’t even be disappointed if he doesn’t. She just wants him to try for his own sake.

 

 

   “What if it doesn’t work?” he asks, because what then? What options then?

 

 

   “Then we find something else. But for now, this is a good place to start,” she says calmly, and Loki lowers his head again and is silent for a little while until he finally says,

 

 

   “I think I already started...”

 

 

  


	6. Contrast Sensitivity

 

 

 

   Loki doesn’t sleep.

 

 

   He dozes in and out of half-formed dreams and old, clouded memories, but he doesn’t sleep.

 

 

   He can’t.

 

 

   When he sleeps, things take on too much clarity, the shapes become too substantial, the remembered feelings sear too deep, and he cannot shake them off or trick them into leaving him be.

 

 

   On the second day, or at least so he thinks, Sigyn takes his temperature to make sure he isn’t plagued by fever, and he can see the near-disappointment in her eyes when the thermometer registers nothing but the usual, the slightly cooler than average temperature that he has lived with for years now.

 

 

   He dutifully dresses and forces down some sustenance at her insistence, and allows himself to be driven to the appointment, but when he sits across from his therapist and is asked to describe how he feels and talk about what’s happening inside him at this moment in time, he hasn’t the energy to reply.

 

 

   It is an awkward hour of minute but exhausting shrugs and practically useless murmured sounds of response that could be interpreted as either assent or dissent in answer to various questions depending on how badly one wanted to hear something specific from him.

 

 

   Loki _has_ no actual words to describe or explain the edge he’s balancing on.

 

 

   All he feels when he’s done and Sigyn takes him home is the same bone-deep weariness and apathetic listlessness he’s felt all along. He neither has the energy nor the will to attempt to tear through it to anything else, because he knows from experience what lurks beneath the surface of this haze, and it frightens him.

 

 

   Eventually, though, the decision is taken out of his hands, and he falls asleep fully dressed atop his own bed, unable to stave it off any longer.

 

 

   The things in his head sharpen, but he cannot wake up.

 

 

   They writhe, and they twist his thoughts with them, until blue eyes merge with a far colder set of blue, soft lips become hard, unforgiving lines of disappointment and anger, and Loki loses himself in the wreck of memories half-demolished by fear and pain.

 

 

   _Loki is a child, cradling a wrenched arm –_

 

 

_insisting that he did not fall –_

 

 

_asking why he is being punished –_

 

 

   **_I am not lying_** –

 

 

   _listen to me_ –

 

 

   **_look_** _at me_ –

 

 

   _it hurts, it hurts_ –

 

 

   _I won’t do it again, I **promise** , I won’t_ –

 

 

   **_Honestly_** _–_

 

 

   Loki jerks awake, shivering, muscles tight and adrenaline coursing through him. His jacket is missing, his shoes are not on his feet, and Sigyn’s arms are curved around his chest. She is pressed against his back, humming to him softly, and his heart slows – but so, _so_ slowly – and he breathes in earnest. His muscles do not relax, and they burn with that inability. His eyes are wide open, though the room is dark greys and deep, deep blues, and he cannot see much of it.

 

 

   He’s not seeing anything except the spectres of his nightmare, the wraithlike remnants of his childhood releasing their hold on him and slipping away into whatever recess they occupy during the hours where he is in control.

 

 

   “How long did I sleep?” he asks, and his voice is quiet and painful, hurting his throat. His mouth feels bloody, but it just tastes cold.

 

 

   “Almost eight hours. You needed it. Can you go back to sleep?”

 

 

   He doesn’t ever want to close his eyes again.

 

 

   “No.”

 

 

   It’s not that he can’t, but that he _can’t_.

 

 

   “Okay. Are you hungry?”

 

 

   Loki clenches his jaw against the nausea that rises at the very thought of chewing or swallowing anything. The edges of his mouth feel sore and tight, and he can’t even contemplate trying to push anything past his lips.

 

 

   “No.”

 

 

   There is a hole at the bottom of his stomach that gnaws at him and seems intent on letting the rest of what lives in his chest cavity drain downwards into it, but he cannot imagine trying to fill it with anything.

 

 

   Loki is _not_ hungry.

 

 

   “Do you want a bath? I could run you one,” Sigyn offers, and Loki thinks _weightless, warm, cradled_ , and says,

 

 

   “Please.”

 

 

   He feels her press him close for a second and then leave him entirely, and he has no concept of how long it is before she returns and tells him,

 

 

   “It’s ready.”

 

 

   He slips off the bed and enters the bathroom, locking the door behind him. The water looks soft and enticing, like a cloud waiting to envelop him, but the mirror is not yet fully obscured by steam, so Loki avoids it as he sheds his clothes and slides himself into the tub.

 

 

   The superficial relief of the heat is bliss enough in itself, but it seeps into him even further and begins to soothe his aching limbs and, eventually, some of the edges from his mind.

 

 

   Loki lets himself sink in as deeply as he can while still able to breathe, and tips his head back until the only things not submerged are the more prominent features of his face.

 

 

   He can feel his eyelashes grow silken-heavy with the moisture billowing slowly into the air from the surface of the water, and his lips fall open as everything in him releases the tension he’s held for days now.

 

 

   He is hidden, safe, warm. He can think, now, if he so chooses. He can decide things, matters and ideas and wishes that need not stand up to the harsh trials of reality and all that is outside the here and now.

 

 

   If he wants, he can think about unevenly gilded skin and guileless, desiring hands, and kisses tinged with a lingering innocence, and he can let himself dwell on what-ifs.

 

 

   He can hear the water pressing against his ears, and the gentle sound of it calms him.

 

 

   When the water begins to cool slightly, he heaves himself out, dries off by touch alone and with his back to the mirror.

 

 

   Loki doesn’t want to look at himself. It won’t help.

 

 

   The air outside the bathroom is colder than inside, and Loki’s skin is dappled with it by the time he reaches his bedroom and can pull on something soft and dark and unobtrusive to help insulate him against the pervasive chill that seems to reside just under the surface warmth of his skin.

 

 

   Sigyn hands him a cup of tea, sits behind him on his bed, pushes her fingers through his hair and smoothes it down, pulls a little.

 

 

   “You have to come in tomorrow,” she tells him, and he makes a non-committal sound.

 

 

   “Loki. You have to,” she insists, and he breathes in deeply.

 

 

   “I know.”

 

 

   “You don’t have to talk to anyone if you don’t want to, I’ll handle all that. You can hole up in the archives if you like,” Sigyn promises, and he turns his face to smile at her from one of its corners. It is a weak, wavering thing, but it is there and she sees it.

 

 

   “Thank you,” he says sincerely.

 

 

   “It’s fine.”

 

 

   It is fine. There are no owed favours between them.

 

 

   They sit in comfortable silence while Loki gradually relaxes, and finally he is tired enough that he can allow Sigyn to tuck him into bed properly.

 

 

   This time he only sleeps for three hours, but it’s eight in the morning when he wakes, and he never dreamt. It’s not quite refreshing and it doesn’t comfort him, but it’s a welcome respite and it gives him just enough energy left over to think about beginning his day.

 

 

   He drags out the time until he has to face himself, but once breakfast has been choked down and the morning ablutions completed, he has little choice but to confront the mirror.

 

 

   Loki’s made certain to at least dress beforehand, so all he has to deal with is the evaluation of how much damage has been done to his face and what sort of mood his hair’s in after not having been taken care of after his bath.

 

 

   The pallid reflection is everything he doesn’t want to see, right down to the empty weariness of the eyes and the smudges of greyed plum beneath them.

 

 

   He has to sweep aside his curls to properly assess things, and drops his hand in disgust when the motion reveals a tired youth usually hidden behind layers of indifferent sophistication.

 

 

   Loki can’t imagine leaving the house like this – the very idea penetrates the residual apathy and sends a shiver of superficial horror through him – but at the same time there isn’t much to be done about it.

 

 

   He fervently hopes he can hide in the archives until his shift ends. If anyone should ever see him like this – _hollow, wraithlike, **worn**_ –

 

 

   _Wait_.

 

 

   That is _not_ a factor.

 

 

   Besides, it wouldn’t matter.

 

 

    _If he’s even **there...**_

 

 

   Loki doesn’t care. Loki can’t allow himself to. Loki has more important things to worry about than potentially being seen in this state by someone he barely knows and has only spoken to twice.

 

 

   Even if it is someone whom Loki is pleased to recall found him attractive. Someone who actually expressed an interest in _speaking_ to Loki, which is entirely beside any kind of point.

 

 

   Why _should_ it matter? Loki owes nothing to anyone, least of all the presentation of a certain face outwards. Loki can do whatever he wants. He doesn’t need to impress anyone, ever. This is all just his own damnable vanity, and he can overcome that.

 

 

   At least, he can overcome it to the extent that after thirty minutes of rather hardcore preening he finds things up to standard enough to agree to go to work only if he can be allowed to skulk in the less used levels of the building for the duration of his shift, and during the drive to the library he essentially hides his entire face in his scarf and is quite content to tell himself that he just doesn’t fancy catching cold when he’s already feeling so run-down – after all, there’s something of that nature circulating, Loki’s rather sensible to take care of himself.

 

 

   He suffers Sigyn’s hug gladly before they leave their jackets and bags in the staff lounge, and is quite prepared to steal down to the archives by the more shadowy route when he hears her address someone cheerfully, not far from where he left her to go his own way.

 

 

   He has the presence of mind to step behind a corner quickly before turning to spy on her movements.

 

 

   Upsettingly, she’s speaking to exactly the last person in the world whom Loki feels up to facing today. Or, indeed, any other day.

 

 

   Of course this is how it has to happen, he thinks. Of course the staff lounge isn’t far enough from everything else to completely negate the possibility of this happening. Of course Loki hasn’t quite managed to flee downstairs to the comfort and safety of the sweet-smelling, dry warmth of the archives.

 

 

   Of course Rogers would pick the worst possible day to stray this far from his usual table near the front desk for the Gods can only know what reason at the worst possible moment enabling Sigyn to snare him in conversation.

 

 

   Which she has indeed seen fit to do.

 

 

   Of course.

 

 

   None of this could have happened on a day where Loki feels attractive and is in relatively good spirits and hasn’t got confusing, upsetting feelings relating to this individual swirling around in the back of his mind in echoes of how badly their last interaction went.

 

 

   That just wouldn’t be nearly as unpleasant as a Loki who feels drained and bedraggled despite his very best efforts having to watch his best friend speak to a Steve Rogers who looks not only happy to see her but also simply content to be alive on this of all days, and so of course the universe could never allow it.

 

 

   _This_ , however, it seems to approve of well enough.

 

 

   Spitefully, Loki feels like sidling up to them and saying something cruel just to wipe the damned _smile_ off Steve Rogers’ ridiculously friendly face as he returns some greeting or other. The earnestness radiating from the young man turns Loki’s stomach and makes his throat sear with repressed bile.

 

 

   It’s simply ludicrous that anyone his age should be so artless and unaffected, and Loki fairly seethes at the idea that it could all be true, because it’s just not _right_.

 

 

   Loki spends a few seconds fruitlessly wrestling with his own decided-upon judgment of Steve and glaring in his direction in an effort to kick-start the usually instant unrestricted-hatred-of-all-things reflex which Loki has come to so rely on during days where he needs additional shielding from the world, but nothing happens other than his frustration banking to a slow and steady burn in his chest and his hands hurting as he realises he’s clenching them too hard.

 

 

   He decides to direct a greater portion of his affront at this unfairness towards Sigyn and fumes in a slightly more satisfying and productive fashion as he comes to the natural conclusion that she could have no possible reason to stand about bandying loose words with Rogers and therefore is once again committing acts of base treachery against Loki’s person.

 

 

   Loki allows himself an infuriated little shake and then tosses his head with all the proud hauteur of a lifetime’s practice.

 

 

   _He_ certainly doesn’t care. _He_ is above all this petty speculation. _He_ has no desire to intervene and make everyone very uncomfortable just because he can. There is no lighting issue _whatsoever_. It is nothing to him who Sigyn speaks to _or_ who enters his workplace. He has washed his hands of Steve Rogers, just as he told Sigyn. It matters very little if at all to Loki that Rogers seems a genuinely decent person – that surely won’t last long anyway, not in these cruelly vulgar modern times, and Loki doesn’t intend to be there to see it inevitably wear off and reveal whatever has to be hidden underneath all that winsome warmth.

 

 

   Loki doesn’t quite manage to escape before Sigyn pats Steve on the arm and sweeps past him onwards to her usual post at the front desk, and so he has not yet moved out of Steve’s line of sight – however well-buried in the shadows he has managed to place himself – when it is suddenly no longer occupied by Sigyn anymore.

 

 

   Loki knows he’s been spotted – lurking there in the gloom and completely revealed in his underhanded, sneaking ways – by the widening of Steve’s eyes as though they are working to refocus on something, and the slight parting of his lips almost as if he was thinking of calling out but caught himself at the last moment.

 

 

   There is a fraught, tense interlude where Loki is frozen, uncertain as to what’s required of him, unwilling to venture into being the first to act and breach the gap he purposely placed between them the last time he had anything to do with this person.

 

 

   Steve’s smile is soft, shy, and utterly sincere, and it is given entirely to Loki. There’s not an ounce of awkwardness or disappointment about him, and however gentle the expression, it still seems to make him glow.

 

 

   Now that obviously _has_ to be a lighting issue, otherwise Loki is just going to have to go home again in protest against the unjust imbalances of the world.

 

 

   “Hey,” Steve mouths, barely any hint of sound to it at all, and Loki’s stubbornness bites at him to not let this go unchallenged.

 

 

   Sadly, it bites sharply enough for him to move away from the half-safety of the corner and the escape it promises, and towards the perilous edge of the forgiving dimness.

 

 

   “Steve,” he says quietly, and he’s not sure whether he’s glad that there’s no venom to it or not.

 

 

   “Good to see you, Loki,” Steve replies, and his voice is hushed but pleasant. If Loki didn’t know better he’d think Steve meant every word.

 

 

   “Is it really?” he asks, and he’s rather surprised at himself for daring to ask when the hurt of what he’s done is still so fresh in his mind.

 

 

   Steve beams at him, but there’s a sparkle in his eyes that speaks of some deeply-buried mischief Loki has yet to become acquainted with.

 

 

   “Usually,” Steve says with an almost playful air,

 

 

   “Today’s one of those days.”

 

 

   Loki has no response to that – isn’t sure he could find one even given time, he’s that stunned – and Steve takes a slight step forward that’s more a sort of readjustment of stance, and adds,

 

 

   “I’m glad to see you looking good.”

 

 

   Loki’s unaware of approving the short laugh that escapes him, but it’s his alright and it hangs there in front of him like a mockery of his self-control.

 

 

   “I doubt you can even see me properly from there,” he finds himself saying, not a little acerbically, but Steve just flushes slightly and trips over the honest reply of,

 

 

   “I don’t need to see you to know you look great. It’s a given.”

 

 

   Loki’s vanity is almost as flattered as his frustration is fierce, and he scowls.

 

 

   “Don’t be ridiculous,” he snaps, crossing his arms tightly enough for his elbows to ache a little.

 

 

   “I’m not going to apologise for my opinion,” Steve insists, and for some reason this disturbs the smouldering embers of Loki’s temper and he stalks forward, past the sheltering lack of real light and into the pool of unfortunate illumination provided by the one functioning bulb in the lamp directly above Rogers.

 

 

   “Well then I suggest you revise it instead,” he hisses,

 

 

   “Because I neither need nor want your empty compliments.”

 

 

   Steve just looks at him, stands his ground, and Loki belatedly realises they’re much too close and that it’s his own fault.

 

 

   “That because it’s coming from me or because you don’t believe it anyway?” he asks, and there’s a hint of calm defiance to it that makes Loki hear it as more of a demand.

 

 

   He isn’t able to hold back the anger or the deliberately hurtful inflection when he snaps,

 

 

   “It’s because I know what several days of next to no sleep looks like and it’s hardly inspiring or conducive to flattery!”

 

 

   Loki stops just short of actual insult – just this side of calling Steve a scheming liar. He isn’t certain whether it’s because he’s saving it for later or because he can’t actually make himself accuse Steve of that.

 

 

   “What inspires me isn’t really up to you. I’m just calling it how I see it,” Steve says firmly, and Loki glares at him, well on the way to being properly enraged. He’s much too tired and sick of life to deal with anything right now, much less a Steve Rogers with backbone and a smart mouth, and he just wants to scream and stamp his feet and throw the biggest tantrum of the year to date at the awful sensation of slamming his shields up against this suddenly collected young man with no result.

 

 

   “And what exactly do you hope to gain from that?” Loki demands, claws at the ready to seize upon the slightest mistake or hint at selfish motives.

 

 

   “Nothing,” Steve returns, quite calm, completely reasonable. Loki has no patience for it, it grates along his every nerve ending.

 

 

   “I mean, it’d be nice if you believed me, but even if you don’t, it’s fine. I just think you should know the truth.”

 

 

   “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” Loki flings at him,

 

 

   “And in any case you can keep your pity!”

 

 

   Steve flinches, and a wounded expression crosses his face, but instead of backing down, he sets his jaw and tells Loki quietly but clearly,

 

 

   “Loki, I don’t think you really understand, and I guess that’s part of why you should be told, but I’m not ever going to pity you for the way you look.”

 

 

   There’s a kind of anger behind the hurt in Steve’s eyes, and he’s right in that Loki doesn’t understand it, but Loki’s past the point of rationally analysing why that might be and isn’t up to the usual convoluted considerations he prefers to go through before responding to things.

 

 

   Loki learned years ago that when all else fails and he’s running out of resources and options, getting angry is the fastest way to ending an unpleasant encounter, even if _he_ doesn’t win. Sometimes losing is even the better goal to have in mind because at least then it won’t take nearly so long to be done with whoever and whatever he’s dealing with.

 

 

   Loki isn’t used to this tactic failing him. It’s intensely disquieting.

 

 

   “I’m sorry you’re tired and you haven’t been sleeping well, and I hope that changes for you soon,” Steve continues, a compassionate warmth entering his voice however stern and sad his eyes remain,

 

 

   “But you _always_ look amazing. You’re just... You’re just lucky that way.”

 

 

   Loki shrinks back a little from the total frankness on Steve’s face, the fact that he can hear something else underneath the words Steve actually picked to present him with, and looks away and down.

 

 

   He is in no way affected by the tone of Steve’s voice or his apparent complete honesty. He _certainly_ isn’t affected by this blatant appeal to his currently somewhat shaky sense of his own physical attractions. Loki has no interest in such –

 

 

   Well now, _there’s_ an interesting thing.

 

 

   Has Loki previously truly allowed himself to appreciate what very shapely hands Rogers is blessed with?

 

 

   He thinks not.

 

 

   It is only a little distracting. Just a little.

 

 

   _Steve Rogers has an artist’s hands._

 

 

   It’s much too distracting all of a sudden, as though it builds on itself too quickly to rationalise away, and so Loki’s eyes roam the rest of this infuriating Rogers person to find something safe and unappealing to focus on in the face of his conflicted emotions.

 

 

   _There’s nothing._

 

 

   “I guess I just think you could use a different perspective on that front,” Steve adds, now sounding a little uncomfortable and hesitant, a hint of the shyness likely as ever-present in Steve as Loki’s anxiety is in him peeking through, but he seems to draw some excess courage from somewhere even in the face of Loki’s darting eyes and continuing silence, and he smiles.

 

 

   “Trust me – ”

 

 

   Loki can’t _do_ that, how can he even ask it, as though it’s so _easy_ , as if it isn’t horrible and frightening and _impossible_ –

 

 

   “I’m an artist, I know all about perspective.”

 

 

   Loki’s wandering gaze slides inexorably from the gilt of Steve’s hair to the glowing sincerity of his lovely blue eyes, and something gives in his head and trickles down his spine, bending him to its will.

 

 

   _Do unto others what they have done unto you._

 

 

   If Loki cannot win, cannot deny, cannot wield the situation how he wishes, at the very least he can take back a little control through sheer unpredictability. If Loki is to be unsettled and uncertain, then let no one else feel safe or certain of him.

 

 

   What better way to fight this battle than by giving in a little to test what needs further pushing and what lies on the brink already? Loki has always done best by taking the low roads and what turns others least expect of him.

 

 

   If it is a last attempt to conceal and save face on his part in this case, well, so be it. If Loki cannot _win_ he can at least take as much as he feels is being taken from him. That is how it has always been, a last-ditch resource to lean on when threatened and conflicted.

 

 

   If it is not what Loki _truly_ wants to do here, well. It is no longer his conscious decision to make.

 

 

   “Really?” he asks, and he can hear the intention in his own voice just as well as he can feel the way he’s looking at Steve now, but he hasn’t the strength to resist it, to lay down this one weapon he feels remains to him, least of all when Steve’s back straightens in shock at the sudden shift in Loki’s tone and demeanour and his eyes widen until Loki can see how his own dark silhouette is reflected there.

 

 

   Or maybe he’s just a lot closer than he was a few seconds ago.

 

 

   “I thought so,” Loki discloses, delighting in how obviously he’s affecting Steve. Loki’s never enjoyed being influenced in any way by others – it feels like manipulation even when it’s something as basic and uncontrollable as his own emotional responses – and if he can’t have the upper hand completely then at least he can fight back by stirring things up for his opponent.

 

 

   “I’ve seen you drawing,” he adds, taking in the worried quirk of Steve’s eyebrows –

 

 

   so he _has_ been drawing Loki, must have been, why else would he react like that, how interesting, how _delightful_ –

 

 

   unless he’s just as shy about his artistic leanings as he seems to be about almost everything else and he doesn’t like the idea of anyone noticing –

 

 

   _Does_ anyone notice?

 

 

   Does anyone really notice _him_ , really, actually notice _Steve?_ Is that why he looks so caught out, so upset by the idea that Loki has seen him? Or is it that this artistry of his is a private thing, somehow?

 

 

   Loki wants to know, wants to ask, wants to invade every corner of Steve Rogers and understand what and who he is, because he may have seen him drawing, may have seen him unravel in Loki’s hands and under his tongue, even, but Loki doesn’t _know_ him.

 

 

   It is no longer about taking from this young man to patch up the cracks in Loki’s fractured pride and sense of security.

 

 

   It is no longer an issue of _control_.

 

 

   “Tell me, do you ever work with a low eye level perspective?” Loki asks, wicked and suggestive and genuinely interested in the answer he might get, and Steve flushes.

 

 

   Loki sees him swallow, watches him blink as he processes the question in all its layers, and Loki can’t help but feel triumphant. This is a game he can play in his sleep.

 

 

   It’s one of many, many things he prefers to do _instead_ of sleep, in fact.

 

 

   “Sure,” Steve says shakily, gamely meeting Loki’s gaze,

 

 

   “Why?”

 

 

   “Curiosity. It can be obscenely difficult to master, as I’m sure you are aware, and from what I’ve seen, you’re talented enough. It’s just something I’ve been wondering about,” Loki divulges, and is rewarded for this open confession that he has been thinking of Steve at all by the deeply gratifying sight of Steve sucking his bottom lip between his teeth and biting it before replying,

 

 

   “That’s... it’s not... I haven’t had a lot of practice with it. I mostly – I mean, I prefer – ”

 

 

   Loki manages to ruin Steve’s attempt at replying by mimicking his action, although not purposely. He is abruptly no longer content with simply levelling the playing field like this, with flustering Steve to the point where he can’t string together a decent sentence. It’s not enough.

 

 

   _Why_ isn’t it enough? What more could he _want?_

 

 

   Loki doesn’t want to play games with Steve. Loki’s not interested in that, not even to confirm his suspicions on certain points of interest.

 

 

   It isn’t _satisfying_.

 

 

   If not that, if not to control, if not to strike back to feel less powerless here, if not to prove to himself that he can do as he pleases – that he is not confined by some notion of caring about this person, restricted by it _or_ him – then what is it that Loki wants?

 

 

   “You’re teasing me,” Steve accuses, looking both mildly perturbed and a little relieved, and Loki wonders how much truth there is to that.

 

 

   “And if I’m not?” he needs to know, because he’s not really certain of it himself, needs to base that decision on something – preferably something external given the degree of emotional turmoil and self-doubt he’s currently trying to wade through.

 

 

   Steve’s eyes cloud, and his mouth twists as he clearly tries to divine Loki’s meaning, but Loki gives nothing away because there is nothing to give. Loki wants an answer as much as Steve does.

 

 

   “Are you?” Steve asks at last, and Loki watches him intently, sees the way confusion gives in to genuine concern.

 

 

   “Loki,” Steve presses, and Loki leans forward into his own name, enjoying it. He’s not sure why, if it really is just how nicely Steve pronounces it – carefully, almost – but he likes it.

 

 

   “What if I’m not teasing you?” Loki asks softly,

 

 

   “What if I – ” he cuts himself off before he can reveal too much, and instead says,

 

 

   “What then?”

 

 

   Steve’s mouth falls open as though he wants to speak but hasn’t the words, and his eyes plead with Loki although whether for time to form an answer or to be allowed to avoid having to find one, Loki can't say. Loki doesn’t think – doesn’t _believe_ – that there’s any plea in them that corresponds to what he’s trying to deny wanting for himself.

 

 

   “You don’t mean it,” Steve decides, a sharply rueful smile on his lips even though it looks strained.

 

 

   “Don’t I?” Loki asks, and Steve frowns.

 

 

   “Why are you asking _me?_ I can’t tell you what you want,” he protests, sounding not only upset now but actively angry,

 

 

   “I have no idea what you’d want with me – ”

 

 

   Loki doesn’t like the way Steve says that, as though there’s something the matter with Loki potentially wanting Steve for some reason, and he doesn’t like that he doesn’t even really know what he might want Steve for, but he likes the relative exposure of their position least of all things right now, and his hand circles Steve’s wrist and pulls him forward and towards the barely-lit corner Loki was using to spy from before.

 

 

   Loki rather thinks his brain is guilty of some miscalculation in distance and purpose, because he doesn’t stop there.

 

 

   In fact, he doesn’t stop until they’re actually halfway downstairs to the archive rooms, and even then he’s not fully in control because if he was, he wouldn’t be turning to a deeply bewildered-looking Steve and saying,

 

 

   “Does this give you some idea?”

 

 

   If Loki were really at the helm, he certainly wouldn’t lean in and kiss Steve afterwards, either, as if to prove some point that escapes even Loki himself.

 

 

   Steve’s mouth gives under Loki’s so sweetly that he’s not sure it matters unless he should be suddenly compelled to do something stupid like _stop_.

 

 

   This, Loki doesn’t have to think about. This makes it hard to think at all, in fact.

 

 

   “I – I don’t – ” Steve’s fingers are in Loki’s hair somehow, and he’s panting as if he can’t catch his breath.

 

 

   Loki doesn’t care who or what’s in charge anymore. _This_ is what he wants.

 

 

   “L – oh! Loki!” Steve manages, and Loki does stop, spell broken, because what’s he even _doing_ , _why_ is he doing this, this is _madness_ , this is –

 

 

   “We – we’re in a corridor,” Steve points out, his breathing extremely irregular, and panic wells up in Loki as he realises that this is true, they’re in the middle of everything and he has no idea why or what possessed him to –

 

 

   Steve’s fingers are gently combing through Loki’s hair, a calming contrast to the disconcerting way Steve’s breaths are coming in shallow, forced gasps.

 

 

   “I’m sorry,” Loki whispers, eyes wide as he tries to process what he’s done, but Steve shakes his head, swallows hard, and pushes his fingers through Loki’s hair again as if he isn’t aware that he’s doing it, as if he’s so absorbed in feeling it that he’s forgotten himself entirely on this point.

 

 

   “’s fine...” Steve wheezes, smiling a touch weakly, and then,

 

 

   “You okay?”

 

 

   Loki has to wonder how miserable and conflicted he must look for Steve to feel he needs to ask that. At least Loki can _breathe_.

 

 

   Except he can’t because his chest is too tight, and there’s not enough room in there for air _and_ emotions _and_ words, so Loki blurts out,

 

 

   “I do want you,” completely against his will, and is instantly deeply horrified by it.

 

 

   “Re – really?” Steve asks before Loki can backtrack or cover this admission with anything, the hesitation part breathlessness and part disbelief, and Loki is sorely tempted to run for the hills.

 

 

   He doesn’t think Steve could catch him, if he were to just turn tail and flee. He’s even poised to do it, right on the balls of his feet, ready to just _get out_.

 

 

   Steve’s hands link very briefly at the nape of Loki’s neck, resting just on the ridge of his spine, there, and smooth away the wish to take flight and be rid of this moment. He isn’t restraining Loki or forcing him to stay – it’s not a controlling gesture.

 

 

   Loki doesn’t run.

 

 

   Instead, he presses increasingly desirous kisses to Steve’s neck and jaw and ignores the fear that’s steadily poisoning even the simple purity of just _wanting_.

 

 

   Loki has him, right now, in this instance. He may never have the nerve again and it’s too late to back out under some pretext, so why shouldn’t he enjoy this however he can? Maybe Sigyn’s at least partially right in that. Should Loki find himself inexplicably in a situation like this one, surely there’s no reason why he shouldn’t – no.

 

 

   He’s not taking advantage. He _isn’t_. There’s nothing wrong in this, he can allow himself whatever the hell this is, just for now, without having done anything wrong.

 

 

   He can always wallow in self-loathing and despair later, it’s not as if it’s _going_ anywhere.

 

 

   “Loki... _Loki_...” Steve seems rather intent on speaking now that he can breathe a little easier, which Loki doesn’t at all understand, but he allows Steve to gently pull away far enough to scrutinise Loki carefully.

 

 

   “Are you sure?” Steve asks, and Loki can see as well as hear how important the answer is to him, but he can only shake his head and say,

 

 

   “I can’t give you what _you_ want,” in a key that highly suggests that he’s about to burst into tears – he swears he’ll die of shame if that happens – and the conflicted frown is suddenly wiped from Steve’s brow as if it was never there.

 

 

   “I’m not asking you for anything,” Steve tells him, as if calmly reminding him of something Loki should already know or has already been told, and Loki pauses, mid-nervous breakdown.

 

 

   Loki’s the one being demanding, here. Loki’s the instigator. Loki’s the one trying so hard to just act now and think later even though he knows from experience that he isn’t capable of switching all his baggage off and on like that. Loki’s the one who’s not just blowing hot and cold but everything in between all at once with no discernable evidence as to what’s triggering which reaction.

 

 

   Steve’s really being remarkably tolerant of Loki’s lack of reasonability, answers, or self control.

 

 

   “Do you need to?” Loki has to know, because however attractive Steve is to him right now, however much Loki wants to give in to whatever absurdly appealing quality it is that has Loki desperate to tear into Steve so he can find it and examine it and simultaneously massively resentful of how little power Loki seems to have to withstand that urge, everyone always needs or wants _something_.

 

 

   Loki doesn’t believe that Steve’s tolerance, or the patience that is apparently part of the deal, comes without strings and conditions. Nothing that tempting ever does.

 

 

   For that matter, Loki isn’t convinced that he’s not just acting from the past few days’ accumulated pent-up melancholia, and he can’t take that out on Steve. It’s Loki’s problem.

 

 

   Or rather, Loki _is_ the problem.

 

 

   “Well, I guess I’d like it if you weren’t so broken up about this,” Steve says with a half-smile, as though it isn’t a serious condition of his holding up whatever his end of this is, as if this can be made light of in any way, but that’s not how Loki translates it, and he flinches.

 

 

   “Well I _am_ broken,” he lashes out,

 

 

   “Sorry to disappoint.”

 

 

   The dismay is instantly visible in Steve and he trips all over himself to try and make right what’s been twisted.

 

 

   ‘ _You can’t fix **me,’**_ echoes in Loki’s head.

 

 

   “No, that – I know – I mean, you’re obviously not _happy_ , but you’re not _broken_ , that’s not what I meant – that’s not what I said at all!” Steve says quickly, but the subject of Loki’s obvious unhappiness is secondary to the ice that creeps along Loki’s veins at that one word.

 

 

   “You _know?_ ”

 

 

   Loki lets go of Steve, holding his hands out by his sides, fingers unfurled, everything tense and waiting.

 

 

   “ _What_ do you know?”

 

 

   The lack of comprehension on Steve’s face would suggest the answer is ‘nothing’, but that’s a lie Loki’s simply not willing to believe and unable to ignore.

 

 

   “You don’t know anything about me,” he tells Steve, reminding both of them of this glaring, highly relevant fact, cold, hard dread washing through him.

 

 

   “Do you? _Not a thing_. You can’t possibly know anything real about me. How could you? Tell me,” Loki demands, panic and anger and deep, dark horror flooding him and infecting the fragile balance, so hard-won and precarious.

 

 

   “No, Loki – ” Steve tries, but there is an agitated disappointment in his voice, a kind of hopeless consternation in his wide, blue gaze now, and whatever barrier separates Loki’s remembered pain and nightmarish memories in his waking hours snaps or withers and suddenly this reality, these observed reactions to something Loki has said and done sheers into the other, and it’s too much.

 

 

   “ ** _Tell me!_** ”

 

 

   Steve shrinks back from Loki’s demanding howl, the sound echoing around them seeming to make him ripple as though he’s far less substantial than he is, and he shakes his head, swallowing explanations that Loki’s too far gone to really hear.

 

 

   “ _What_ do you know? Who’ve you been speaking to? Sigyn? _Thor?_ Which one did you go to for this? _What did they tell you?!_ ”

 

 

   Loki is shaking, past the point of hysteria and well into complete frantic alarm.

 

 

   No one knows, no one can know, not ever, no one could understand, and the thought, the horrible, wretched idea that Steve might have sought these answers elsewhere, _has_ sought answers _anywhere_ –

 

 

   Loki feels like he’s choking on it, on his own rage and hatred and abominable sense of betrayal, and he cannot contain it all.

 

 

   “Loki, _no_ , I’d never do that to you, I’d never go behind your back like that, I _wouldn’t_ ,” Steve is insisting fervently, eyes blazing, but their sincerity is lost on Loki and has no power against the bitter anger that has only one available target.

 

 

   “But you _have_. So which one was it? Did you go to Thor and wheedle out of him who I am – _what_ I am? Did you tell him what I did to you? Does he know?” Loki spits, venomous and seething, and Steve recoils, shaking his head frantically.

 

 

   “No! No, I wouldn’t – I _didn’t!_ How can you – ”

 

 

   “Sigyn, then? Did you ask her how to approach me? Did she tell you about us – about how _broken_ we are?”

 

 

   Steve seems to crumple in on himself, and Loki knows.

 

 

   “She told you.”

 

 

   “I never asked her anything,” Steve says, hard and sure,

 

 

   “Not ever, except whether you were okay. That’s _all_.”

 

 

   “Oh, how likely,” Loki bites back,

 

 

   “And she told you nothing _but_ that, did she?”

 

 

   Loki has the right of it – it’s in the way Steve’s face falls, the misery that creeps into his eyes, the slump of his shoulders. It’s in his voice when he pleads,

 

 

   “Loki, that’s not how it was – ”

 

 

   “ _Not how it was?_ So she didn’t tell you about our childhoods, the abuse, the damage done? Of course she did, and you _listened_ , even though she had no right to tell you and you had no right to hear that from anyone but me!”

 

 

   Steve’s face is pinched and worried and so horribly _guilty_ , but Loki has no room to care for that.

 

 

   _They had no **right**._

 

 

   How _dare_ they share that – share such a deeply personal, painful part of Loki without his knowledge – without his permission?

 

 

   How could Sigyn do this to him? Give away everything he is, all Loki’s darkest secrets, on a whim? And without telling him, without asking him how he felt about it!

 

 

   How dare they discuss those things – how dare they discuss _Loki_ – behind his back like that?

 

 

   Loki feels faint with the sheer intensity of his own rage, and he staggers back a few steps, out of reach where Steve cannot touch him unless he follows.

 

 

   Loki doesn’t know how he’ll react if Steve does that, can’t bear to be so close to him, can’t bear to even _look_ at him.

 

 

   “Loki,” Steve says, urgently, quietly, sounding desperate and horrified,

 

 

   “Loki, I swear that’s not how it was. I promise, she never told me anything, it wasn’t like that – she just told me not to expect anything from you, not to – not to lead you on if I couldn’t – ”

 

 

   “Couldn’t _what?_ ” Loki snarls,

 

 

   “Handle me? Put up with me?”

 

 

   “ _No!_ ”

 

 

   “And I suppose she wasn’t the one who told you how to speak to me, either – that she never once told you how to insinuate yourself – that she’s not the one who encouraged you to be more _assertive_ ,” Loki sneers, disgusted at the thought that his best friend had coaxed someone into approaching Loki, told them how to, told them what to say and do.

 

 

   Pushed _Loki_ to accept him.

 

 

   Loki _hates_ that Sigyn has done this. To both of them. Forced Steve’s hand, betrayed Loki’s confidence...

 

 

   “Sigyn told me you’d had it pretty rough and to leave you alone unless I was going to treat you right,” Steve retorts, clearly angry, blue eyes flashing,

 

 

   “Yes, she told me not to give up, and yes, she encouraged me to have a little more faith in myself and actually talk to you, but she didn’t tell me what to say and she never told me what the two of you went through when you were kids, just that it was bad.”

 

 

   “And you expect me to believe that?!” Loki cries,

 

 

   “How exactly did you think you would benefit from this arrangement? Did you really think I wouldn’t find out? Or did you think I wouldn’t care that you’d been made privy to my secrets without my knowledge?”

 

 

   Unless...

 

 

   “Or did you just want to get close enough to see how far you could take this? Is that it? What else did she tell you, then? How to dress? How to behave?”

 

 

   Loki’s tone is harsh and mocking and bitterly disappointed, in Steve, in Sigyn, and in himself for being fool enough to actually fall for this.

 

 

   “Did she tell you how to _deal_ with me? When to apologise and when to argue?”

 

 

   Steve’s face is flushed with mortification and Loki can see him biting his tongue to avoid replying.

 

 

   Let him.

 

 

   “Did _she_ tell you how to flatter me, what I like to hear and when to use it?”

 

 

   Steve is shaking his head but his face is still flaming and he’s clearly trembling with suppressed emotion.

 

 

   Loki doesn’t care what that emotion might be. It can’t be anything compared to how furious he is at the idea that the two of them planned this, planned to snare him in something he had no hand in creating and allow him to believe otherwise.

 

 

   How hurt he is that someone he loves and trusts as he loves and trusts Sigyn would engineer something like this and trick Loki into it because she has decided for him that it is what he needs or should be doing.

 

 

   How humiliated he is to have been so taken by something so false and contrived – something opportunistic and distorted. Something he had so badly wanted to think true.

 

 

   “Were the two of you planning to just let me believe I was lucky enough to find someone who actually likes and understands me? And what would you have done when you got _bored_ , I wonder – how would you have worked _that_ out between you? One last big fight to make the parting seem fitting and mutual, as though I had any real choice in the matter? As though I was more than just a helpless incompetent who needs a puppeteer following a pre-arranged script to have even half a chance at connecting with another person?”

 

 

   “ _Stop_ , please, stop it,” Steve entreats, lifting his head so Loki can see his eyes, shining and pained,

 

 

   “It’s cruel and it’s not true.”

 

 

   “You don’t think it’s _cruel_ to conspire with the only person whose word I completely trust to trick me into liking you?” Loki demands, and Steve flinches as if struck.

 

 

   “She told me you liked me. She said you told her so,” he whispers, as if he can’t gather the air to lend the words any real substance.

 

 

   “I did,” Loki says coldly.

 

 

   He doesn’t add, _that makes it hurt more._

That doesn’t make it any less true or the pain less awful to bear.

 

 

   “I never lied to you,” Steve says beseechingly,

 

 

   “I swear she never gave me any details. It’s not the way you think it is – she didn’t want me hurting you, hanging around if I didn’t really mean anything by it. She didn’t want you to get hurt if I turned out to be a jerk who didn’t really care about you. She was scared in case I hurt you because you’d told her you – that you liked me – ”

 

 

   Steve’s voice hitches as though it’s hard for him to apply that in the past tense, but he continues,

 

 

   “She wanted me to understand the consequences of what I was doing.”

 

 

   “And what did she think you _were_ doing?”

 

 

   Steve swallows and says, very quietly,

 

 

   “She said she could tell I was – that I really like you. That I mean it. She wanted me to give up on you before I got too attached so neither of us would get hurt if I couldn’t – if I messed up or hurt you or – she said the two of you had things in your past that hurt you and you don’t need any more. She said I had to be prepared for that if I was going to stick around.”

 

 

   Steve takes a step forward and looks as though he regrets doing so immediately, because Loki shies away and something behind Steve’s eyes fractures and bleeds through into his gaze.

 

 

   He looks at Loki as if he’ll never have another chance to really do so and needs to take it all in while he can, and as if that hurts him more than he can begin to express.

 

 

   Loki almost wants to reach out to him and reassure him, comfort him, but he can’t and he won’t allow himself to even think it. Not now.

 

 

   “Loki, I never asked her anything about you. I just wanted to know if you were okay after we – after you called me, because you didn’t sound right and I thought – I hated that maybe it was my fault you were upset. That’s all. She never told me anything else, either, just warned me not to get involved or get attached if it was for the wrong reasons. I swear to God, that’s all it was. I’d never ask _anyone_ personal questions about you, it’s nothing to do with me unless you choose to tell me stuff, and she’d never say anything even if I did ask. She loves you, she wouldn’t do that to you.”

 

 

   Loki can’t look at him. He’s not equal to it. Instead, he stares down the remaining length of the dimly lit corridor to the closed door at the end that leads downstairs.

 

 

   “...neither would I.”

 

 

   It takes all the effort he has left in him just to keep standing there.

 

 

   “Loki, please. Please believe me.”

 

 

   Loki doesn’t, because he can’t. What little trust he had in the underlying decency of this man feels twisted, violated by what’s passed between them.

 

 

   _Loki_ feels twisted, both for the hateful feelings still raging through him and for so easily thinking the worst, almost glad to do so for the opportunity to end this and be rid of the confusion, this awful, gnawing attraction to something he can’t depend on and isn’t even sure really exists beyond how much he wishes it to, and even that frightens and dismays him.

 

 

   “Will you at least look at me?”

 

 

   Loki’s not sure he can do that, but he tries for the sake of buying time while he tries to find something he can say to end this, to make it go away, to fix what’s been broken here.

 

 

   He manages to turn his head in the right direction, but he ends up looking blankly at Steve’s shoes, his hair slipping forward over his shoulders a little, framing the picture nicely.

 

 

   Steve doesn’t look anything like most of the people Loki knows or has met. It’s like he doesn’t care, at least for any notions about current fashion, but at the same time he always looks neat and well turned out.

 

 

   Loki wonders who picks Steve’s clothes for him. Whether he chose his haircut or left that up to some parental figure or other.

 

 

   Does he have a mother who loves him? A father to look up to?

 

 

   Does Steve have siblings he can be a good example to, or siblings he tries to emulate?

 

 

   If so, are they like him, Loki wonders, all gilded hair and summer-sky eyes and shy smiles?

 

 

   Are they too good to be true as well?

 

 

   Have they proven that yet or is it a nasty surprise for someone in the making?

 

 

   Maybe even for each other.

 

 

   “Loki, I’m sorry. I didn’t think – I never meant to screw up this way, I never meant this to happen. I hate this whole misunderstanding, and I know it’s my fault, but – do you want me to leave?”

 

 

   Loki doesn’t know what he wants anymore. Maybe he didn’t even really know when he thought he finally did, at least a little, when it was suddenly as simple as his mouth against Steve’s, as easy as just wanting to be closer.

 

 

   “What do you want from me?” Loki asks softly, energy well and truly spent now, head pounding with leftover emotions and chest as hollow as his stomach.

 

 

   “I want you to be as happy as you can be,” Steve says earnestly, and Loki closes his eyes. He leans back a little to rest against the wall, and he needs to stiffen his knees to avoid sliding down it in an exhausted heap of limbs.

 

 

   “What do you want for _yourself?_ ”

 

 

   There is a long pause, and then Steve ventures,

 

 

   “I really want for you not to hate me...”

 

 

   “I don’t hate you,” Loki says wearily, and this much is true. He hasn’t the strength to hate Steve, to add his imploring blue to the gallery of eyes that flay him while he dreams at night, too tired to wake up and save himself.

 

 

   “Do you... Do you like me at all, anymore? Even just a little?” Steve asks hesitantly, and Loki opens his eyes and reaches out, only just snags Steve’s sleeves with the tips of his index and middle fingers and pulls ever so lightly. Steve follows the gesture, eyes searching Loki’s face for something Loki isn’t sure is there.

 

 

   He doesn’t know whether it should be or not.

 

 

   His fingers trail up Steve’s arm until his hand rests on Steve’s shoulder, and he raises his other hand to gently stroke Steve’s cheek, his thumb briefly caressing Steve’s lower lip and down his chin, onwards down the length of his neck, feeling him swallow and shiver under the touch.

 

 

   Loki leans in and presses his lips to Steve’s delicately, drawing back slightly to study his reaction.

 

 

   Steve doesn’t touch Loki in return. He doesn’t try to at all. He just licks his lips and opens his eyes again slowly, looking drugged and bewildered and desperately sad.

 

 

   “If you’re doing this to punish me...” he begins, but trails off when Loki presses his thumb very carefully, very lightly into his suprasternal notch.

 

 

   “Why couldn’t you breathe, earlier?” he asks quietly, and something like pain crosses Steve’s face. Loki moves his hand to the side.

 

 

   “Asthma,” Steve supplies,

 

 

   “You caught me off guard.”

 

 

   “Does it happen often?” Loki asks, tilting his head slightly to the side and sliding his fingers slowly along the side of Steve’s neck. Steve twitches, seemingly involuntarily, and looks even more pained.

 

 

   “It’s getting better,” he replies, and Loki nods, just once.

 

 

   “Loki, what – ” Steve fumbles for the question he wants to ask while the hand Loki was resting on his shoulder makes its way down again and seeks out Steve’s hand, catching it and holding on.

 

 

   “Why are you – ”

 

 

   Loki leans in again and kisses his way from Steve’s clavicle to his mouth, slowly, experimentally, and Steve makes a sound deep in his throat that sounds like a suppressed sob.

 

 

   “What do you want from me?” Loki asks again, five centimetres from Steve’s lips, eyes devouring every tiny motion of Steve’s face.

 

 

   “I don’t – I can’t – ” Steve struggles, until finally, with a sigh, he says,

 

 

   “I want you to be happy. But... I’ll take whatever you can give me.”

 

 

   Loki sighs into the kiss this time, gentle and sweet and shallow but very much connected, and he feels Steve tentatively run a shaking hand over his hair.

 

 

   Loki pulls back, lets go.

 

 

   Says,

 

 

   “I need you to leave, now,” but not harshly, and not coldly, either.

 

 

   And Steve nods and takes a deep breath and asks,

 

 

   “Are we... Are you okay?”

 

 

   And Loki tells him the truth, because he’s earned it and Loki has no room for anything but.

 

 

   “Maybe.”

 

 

   And Steve watches him as though concerned until Loki adds,

 

 

   “Now go. Take care.”

 

 

   There is no malice or threat to it, and perhaps that’s why Steve smiles a little, however sadly, asks Loki to do the same, and leaves.

 

 

   Loki makes it to the very last row of the archive shelves, in a dark, sweet-smelling corner where he slides down the wall and curls around himself, before the tears come.

 

 

 


	7. Cancel My Midday Meeting; I Have A Reviewal Of Quarterly Life Choices To Put Off

 

 

 

   “Loki – ”

 

 

   It has been four days, but Loki still turns to fix Sigyn with a cold stare that immediately puts paid to whatever she was going to say in that imploring tone of hers.

 

 

   Loki is not going to speak to her. She can try all she likes, provided she feels up to braving his arsenal of angry glares, disgusted sneers, and hard looks, but Loki is _not_ going to speak to her.

 

 

   She bites her lip, seems to struggle with the desire to continue talking, and he turns away again, his attention once more on the book in his lap.

 

 

   “Loki, I – ”

 

 

   The sound of his book snapping shut with a sharp thud interrupts her, and he lays it to one side, gets up, walks past her without so much as a glance at her face, and leaves the room.

 

 

   He can hear her take a deep breath and follow him to the hall, where she dithers while he puts on his boots and shrugs into his jacket.

 

 

   “Loki, please, I never meant to – ”

 

 

   He unlocks the door, lets himself out, and closes it quietly behind him.

 

 

   He’s taken five steps and is almost at the stairwell when he hears it opened violently and her shout of,

 

 

   “I’m still going to be here when you get tired of this and come home, you know! You can shut me out all you like, you can leave if you want to, but I’m not going away and sooner or later we’ll have to talk about this!”

 

 

   His hand is barely touching the banister, but he stops, and replies,

 

 

   “Perhaps I shan’t come back, then.”

 

 

   Her gasp is loud enough for him to hear quite clearly, and it is almost instantly followed by a tear-soaked,

 

 

   “You don’t mean that,” so he turns to look at her.

 

 

   “I trust you, and you use that to attempt to orchestrate my life by forcibly inserting people into it whom I have yet to come to a decision about. I tell you _everything_ , and you pass it along on a whim to someone you barely know a thing about to help him _manage me_ because you want me shepherded into a relationship even though I have expressly told you that I neither want nor feel able to handle such a thing. I _love_ you, and you try and palm me off on someone else at the first chance that presents itself,” he accuses her quietly, coldly, and he’s not the slightest bit moved by her tears.

 

 

   Let them fall. Let her feel a fraction of how horrid Loki felt when he found out what she’d done.

 

 

   “I know I shouldn’t have done that,” she says, voice hitching,

 

 

   “I didn’t do it for the reasons you think, I _wouldn’t_.”

 

 

   “I don’t care _why_ you did it, you knew how I would see it and how I would react if I were to find out and you did it anyway,” he snaps, and she flinches, raising shaking hands to wipe her cheeks – a futile effort since the tears keep coming anyway.

 

 

   “Loki, I’m _sorry_. I never gave him any details – I just wanted to be sure you wouldn’t get hurt – ”

 

 

   “Well I _am_ hurt! And offended, mortified, disgusted, angry – and you knew I would be if I found out, which begs the question of why the hell you did it in the first place!”

 

 

   “I wanted to help, help both of you – I wanted you to be _happy_ for a change, and you weren’t doing anything about it so I thought I’d help you along a bit and it was wrong and I’m _sorry_ , just please,” she cries, shaking her head,

 

 

   “ _Please_ come home even if you don’t forgive me, even if you don’t speak to me, please don’t leave like this. Please come back to me.”

 

 

   Loki isn’t sure whether she’s using those words on purpose or if she’s just so upset that she doesn’t realise what she’s saying exactly, but they still hit their mark like a slap to the face and he looks away, eyes stinging.

 

 

   “You tried to _control_ me,” he hisses, furious beyond words to describe it, to properly tell her how it seethes underneath his skin and claws at his throat.

 

 

   “I didn’t, I wouldn’t,” she protests, but she did so obviously she would and Loki won’t hear her arguments to the contrary if they’re just empty contradictions of what he has observed to be the case.

 

 

   “The fact remains that you did, and you know that you did so stop denying it!”

 

 

   “Yes, alright, but not purposely, I didn’t mean it like that and I’ll never do it again. Don’t go, please, come back in and we can talk about it, please, Loki,” she sobs, and he shakes his head.

 

 

   “No. You lied to me, you manipulated me, and then you tried to deny it. How long would it have gone on had I not found out? However long it took until my life was ordered to your satisfaction? You had no right. I can’t bear to look at you and I don’t want to hear your excuses or your reasons for doing any of it. I’m going out. I’ll be back later. _Don’t_ call me.”

 

 

   He’s got a foot on the first step when she cries,

 

 

   “If you’re not back by eight tonight, please call me and tell me where you are,” and he hesitates. She’s pleading and frightened and however angry he is, he can’t put her in a position where she might relive that particular old pain between them, and so he agrees on,

 

 

   “Eight. If I’m not back by then,” and leaves. He doesn’t hear her re-enter the apartment but he knows she probably has by the time he’s reached the first landing on his way down. She wouldn’t follow him, he feels he can trust to that much at least.

 

 

   Loki reaches the street before he stops to consider where exactly he’s going. He doesn’t really have anywhere in mind – he hadn’t been planning on going out today, he just can’t stand the oppressive company of Sigyn’s misery any longer, or her abortive attempts to make him speak to her about what she’s done.

 

 

   He starts walking without any real sense of where he wants to go, still angry, and it occurs to him while he’s waiting to cross the road that he’s far angrier with Sigyn than he is with Steve.

 

 

   **_Steve_**.

 

 

   Loki _isn’t_ angry with him.

 

 

   Not angry. Not even a little.

 

 

   He’s dialling before he realises what he’s doing, and someone picks up while he’s crossing to the opposite pavement. There’s a fair amount of traffic-related background noise but Loki recognises the somewhat tired,

 

 

   “ _Hello, Rogers household. Who’s calling?_ ” so he dives right in with,

 

 

   “It’s Loki. I’m not angry with you.”

 

 

   Steve answers while Loki’s ducking past someone who is walking too damn slowly, so there’s a tense moment where Loki’s elbow is jostled to the point where he almost drops his phone, but he manages to hear,

 

 

   “ _...to know. Where are you? It’s really noisy._ ” It irks Loki that he doesn’t know what Steve said first but he reassures himself that he can always ask about that later and decides that right now it’ll be too much of an effort to go through the ‘ _what did you say?_ ’ business, and instead he just moves on to,

 

 

   “I’m outside. I wanted to speak to you.”

 

 

   It’s while Steve is saying,

 

 

   “ _I figured you had to be, what with the noise. Did you just want to tell me that you’re not mad at me?_ ” that Loki has to stop in the middle of the sidewalk because of two things.

 

 

   The first is that he just made internal plans to converse with Steve at some later stage in a more in-depth manner – which counts as promising himself further interaction with Steve in the near future – and that it was a natural-seeming afterthought that did not at all horrify him the moment it came to him.

 

 

   The fact that it’s horrifying him _now_ is too little too late and just makes it so much worse.

 

 

   The second is that the edge of attitude in Steve’s comment regarding the din in the background is somehow managing to turn Loki on while simultaneously making him want to be mean to Steve just to punish him for doing that to Loki in the first place.

 

 

   How _dare_ he have multiple appealing qualities? That is _so_ unfair and –

 

 

   “ _Loki?_ ” Steve prompts, and Loki surges forward again, exchanging angry looks with people who seem to feel like his right to stand wherever the hell he wants has unfairly inconvenienced them and the entirety of sidewalk traffic.

 

 

   “I am not angry with you,” Loki repeats,

 

 

   “Only a little bit and you brought that on yourself by being you so I can’t be held responsible for it.”

 

 

   “ _You’re angry with me for being me?_ ” Steve asks, sounding rather lost, and Loki rolls his eyes and takes a right turn at a corner.

 

 

   “Yes,” he snaps,

 

 

   “Keep up.”

 

 

   “ _It’s fine if it is – I mean, I understand if that’s what this is – but is this still about the thing with Sigyn?_ ” Steve inquires, and Loki inhales deeply and reaches for a little calm he’s been keeping in reserve all day for just such an occasion.

 

 

   “It is not. You are not yet forgiven for that, but this is something else,” Loki explains, feeling rather proud of how he avoids words like ‘idiot’ or ‘fool’.

 

 

   “ _So what is it? Tell me what I did,_ ” Steve says, as if suggesting a perfectly ordinary and simple course of action, which of course it is not, and Loki switches hands to better navigate his way around a very large man and tries to think of how his current state of mind can be explained without him sounding completely insane.

 

 

   “I _am_ upset with you for going behind my back, but I’m more upset that I am angrier with Sigyn about this than I am with you, and I’m sure that’s because I currently want you a great deal – which shouldn’t affect my judgment on the matter but probably is – and I am annoyed with you for taking this so well, and – are you at home?”

 

 

   Loki deviates slightly from his attempted explanations when he hears what he thinks is the rustling of pillows on Steve’s end.

 

 

   He is beginning to feel as though he probably shouldn’t have made this call, and the feeling grows ever more unpleasant as the silence stretches on, interspersed with a return of the slight rustling, but finally Steve says,

 

 

   “ _I don’t really understand what I’ve done, but I couldn’t hear everything you said so maybe that’s my fault. Yeah, I’m at home, why? Did you want to see me?_ ”

 

 

   Loki considers this.

 

 

   _Does_ he want to see this infuriating man who apparently doesn’t think Loki is behaving oddly – or at least not noticeably so, which probably speaks volumes about Loki’s usual standard of behaviour where Steve is concerned – and seems willing to completely take all the blame for how strange everything currently is even though Loki’s obviously the one bringing the crazy pretty hard right now?

 

 

   ... _well_ , yes, yes he does rather.

 

 

   Is it that easy?

 

 

   More to the point, is Steve seriously proposing to see Loki? As in, potentially meet Loki somewhere in town? Or could it be understood that Steve is inviting Loki to actually drop by? Or is Loki just inferring all kinds of things that absolutely aren’t on the table?

 

 

   It’s all going horribly wrong, and the worst part is that Loki still doesn’t actually even know what he expected from this conversation.

 

 

   Maybe nothing at all? He retains a vague suspicion that he sort of intended to call and give Steve what for on this whole being-angrier-with-Sigyn front, but now – foolishly – all Loki seems capable of really putting effort into thinking about is getting _Steve_ to give _Loki_ what for.

 

 

   If Loki actually ever spoke to his therapist about current issues, he’s quite certain this one would be at the top of the list under _‘potentially unhealthy emotions to process with the aid of a professional’_.

 

 

   “I don’t know,” he replies after what seems like an eternity of frantically turning it over in his head to find the catch that just _has_ to be there.

 

 

   “ _Okay, well, do you maybe want to tell me all this in person where I can actually hear you properly?_ ” Steve asks, and Loki finds the tone of his voice maddeningly soothing and resents it immediately in a knee-jerk spiking of familiar feelings that are in themselves quite soothing.

 

 

   “What exactly are you angling after?” he demands, glaring back at a woman who walks past him and gives him a hard look for no reason Loki can discern.

 

 

   “ _Nothing. I mean, I guess it’d be great to see you, and I kind of want to know what’s upsetting you because you sound really tense. Are you okay?_ ” Steve sounds so concerned and sincere that Loki has to clench his jaw hard enough for it to ache to restrain himself from saying something unkind, and so he breathes through the urge and ends up saying,

 

 

   “I may have had an altercation with Sigyn. That’s not the point of this. Stop changing the subject.”

 

 

   “ ** _You_** _changed the subject_ ,” Steve reminds him, more than a little unfairly, Loki feels, before adding,

 

 

   “ _Do you want to come over or something? Or I could come and see you, so you can yell at me in person._ ”

 

 

   “That’s not a good idea,” Loki blurts out without thinking over the sound of rapturous fanfare exploding in his head because _he was **right** , he got it right_, and then bites his tongue when he realises how badly it went the last time he said that over the phone to Steve.

 

 

   “ _O-okay. That’s fine,_ ” Steve replies, sounding a tad more subdued and a little more tired than before now, but when he continues on to,

 

 

   “ _Could we maybe talk some other time then? I’ve... kind of had a long day, and it’s a little hard to hear you_ ,” Loki can’t stave off the inexplicable rush of trepidation that grips his spine, and he ends up ducking into a convenient second-hand bookshop that he was just about to pass, and hiding behind a rack of shelves.

 

 

   It’s quieter here, and suddenly he can actually hear what must be Steve breathing and something that Loki can’t quite place but which for some reason makes him think that Steve might be lying down while having this conversation, and before Loki can stop himself, he’s picturing it –

 

 

   _Steve lying on his bed, on top of a slightly worn but still cosy old blue quilt, in some light, airy bedroom, with a writing desk against one wall and a window facing into a garden, and the door open because Loki can’t imagine Steve in a home where doors are closed much..._

 

 

   It’s somehow both a calming and an upsetting image, and Loki finds it’s not as easy to dispel as he would like, so he hugs himself and turns towards the wall as he murmurs,

 

 

   “I’m sorry. I meant that I still need a little time, after all this. I think I just... wanted to hear your voice while I was thinking about you.”

 

 

   The sound which Loki thought was Steve breathing goes away, but then Steve is saying,

 

 

   “ _Okay. I’m really glad you called, then_ ,” and Loki agrees.

 

 

   “I didn’t mean to shout at you,” he tells Steve, which is the closest he thinks he can make himself get to an apology for that aspect of things right now, but there’s a smile in Steve’s voice when he says,

 

 

   “ _It’s okay. You said you weren’t mad, and it **was** really loud. If you hadn’t yelled, I wouldn’t have heard you at all. Were they fixing the road or something?_ ”

 

 

   “There were holes in it, but I think they were making them. Does that count?” Loki asks, and he’s struck by how _normal_ this feels.

 

 

   Just speaking with Steve, about nothing much. It’s not even a little scary.

 

 

   “ _I think that still counts. So..._ ” Loki can sense a question unasked there, and he pokes at it with his own,

 

 

   “So..?”

 

 

   “ _Are you okay?_ ” Steve asks carefully, like he’s afraid Loki’s going to bite his head off or hang up or do something equally atrocious, but Loki weighs the question against what he’s currently feeling, and finds things he isn’t sure belong there.

 

 

   “I’m not sure. I believe I will be, but I’m not there yet,” he says honestly, and Steve seems to digest this before saying,

 

 

   “ _You sound kind of tired._ ”

 

 

   “So do you,” Loki points out, and Steve’s voice is a touch heavier when he replies,

 

 

   “ _I argued with my best friend today, too._ ”

 

 

   Loki isn’t sure how to respond to that, what to say to properly convey that he sympathises, that he understands how awful that is and how bad it feels, and it rather surprises him when he says,

 

 

   “Do you want to talk about it?”

 

 

   Steve’s answering before Loki has a chance to feel truly awkward and wrong-footed in asking such a thing – _that isn’t something Loki does or says, not even really with Sigyn, it’s just not who he **is**_ – and the soft gratitude in Steve’s voice is almost worth the serious strangeness and discomfort Loki’s experiencing in the wake of his own question.

 

 

   “ _It’s fine, it’s just – some things had to be said, so I said them. I don’t really feel bad about **saying** it, I feel bad about how good it feels to have gotten it off my chest..._ ”

 

 

   There’s a pause before Steve adds,

 

 

   “ _I’m sorry, that’s not your problem and I promise I’m not as crazy as that sounded, I just... It’s been a long time coming. Thanks for asking._ ”

 

 

   “It’s fine. I think maybe this was coming for Sigyn and I as well,” Loki muses,

 

 

   “It won’t last, there are just some things I need to think about. Did your friend listen to you?”

 

 

   “ _I hope so,_ ” Steve says earnestly, and then with more warmth,

 

 

   “ _You and Sigyn will be okay. You love each other. Just give it time. That’s probably why you’re mad at her and not so much at me anymore – she means more to you. It hurt you more that she did what she did because you’ve known her for so long and you two are so close. You’ll be okay soon.”_

 

 

   “You sound very sure of that,” Loki accuses, and Steve laughs a little.

 

 

   This, too, is a comforting thing.

 

 

   “ _I **am** sure. And I’m sure she knows you just need some time. Maybe you just have to make it really clear that you need to figure this out on your own so she won’t worry so much_ ,” Steve suggests, and Loki frowns.

 

 

   “Has she – ”

 

 

   “ _She hasn’t said anything to me. I swear. I just figure she’d be upset if you guys weren’t talking and you were mad at her. You know she really cares about you,_ ” Steve interrupts, honest and firm and reassuring, and Loki allows himself to be pacified and wonders whether Steve understands that this is another thing Loki **_never does_** and whether Steve realises how much that probably means and whether Loki should make a bigger deal of it.

 

 

   Loki can’t express any of that in so many words, so what he says instead is,

 

 

   “Your friend will forgive you. He’d be a fool not to. I don’t believe you ever say anything unless you mean it needs to be said and heard.”

 

 

   “ _Thank you,_ ” Steve replies, gently, sweetly, and Loki thinks it sounds as if it would be accompanied by some sort of touch if they were close enough for that.

 

 

   It annoys him that he wishes they were just so he could see whether his suppositions are true, but he is even more annoyed by the idea that Steve is alone and wearied by emotions in the same way that Loki so often is.

 

 

   Loki prefers a Steve unwittingly demonstrating how he is capable of happiness the likes of which Loki can’t recall ever feeling personally.

 

 

   Loki prefers a Steve who is content and smiling. It might still wrench at him, but not painfully so.

 

 

   “Are you... alright?” he asks hesitantly, already feeling so far out of his comfort zone that it’s like what he imagines those first few seconds of fumbling in waters too deep for you must feel before the panic sets in and you start to drown.

 

 

   “ _I will be,_ ” Steve assures him, and the smile Loki wants to see and feel is alive and well in his voice. It’s a lifeline Loki willingly grasps, and he feels no shame doing so.

 

 

   “Good,” he says, meaning it and wishing he could add how much he hopes this development will happen to Steve sooner rather than later.

 

 

   “I’m sorry to call you like this,” he says instead, the memory of the last disastrous phone call still playing out in the back of his mind.

 

 

   “ _It’s fine,_ ” Steve assures him.

 

 

   For a moment, Loki fears that his ability to converse like a normal human being has deserted him, and he shies away from attempting anything in case he screws it up, but he is also compelled to inform Steve that,

 

 

   “It would be nice to see you, at some stage. Truly. But...”

 

 

   It’s while Loki’s grasping for a way to say that everything needs to settle before Loki thinks he can handle seeing Steve that Steve himself, smile still audible, says,

 

 

   “ _Whenever you’re ready. I get it. You need time._ ”

 

 

   Loki wonders whether Steve is blessed with the same gift Sigyn was born with – the marvellous ability to pick up on what Loki needs and wants and smooth the way for him – but he isn’t up to finding out definitively just now.

 

 

   “Thank you. Take care of yourself?” he asks, not sure why it became a question, and Steve laughs quietly.

 

 

   “ _Sure, I’ll try. You and Sigyn take care of each other,_ ” he responds easily, and Loki is comforted by the fact that the first thought this triggers in him is **_‘we always do’_**.

 

 

   “We will,” Loki promises truthfully.

 

 

   “ _Loki?_ ”

 

 

   “Steve?”

 

 

   “ _Call me anytime._ ”

 

 

   Loki is momentarily lost for words, but gathers himself valiantly and, after swallowing a response he would have regretted, says,

 

 

   “Thank you. I’ll... I’ll see you.”

 

 

   “ _Whenever you’re ready,_ ” Steve agrees.

 

 

   They hang up at the same time. Loki unfurls himself from his position behind the shelves, stretches his legs, and strides out of the door with a new purpose.

 

 

   For the next few hours, he sits at his and Sigyn’s favourite coffee place, reading on his phone and mulling over his feelings re Sigyn’s deception. It’s almost eight in the evening before he’s even realised it, and he rises to leave, dialling Sigyn’s number to let her know that he’s on his way back and that he just lost track of time.

 

 

   That they’ll be okay.

 

 

   At least, that’s what he has planned.

 

 

   Sigyn’s phone rings stubbornly on until finally it must accept defeat and passes Loki over to voicemail.

 

 

   Knowing that there could be any number of reasonable explanations, Loki tries again, only to be met with the same results.

 

 

   It is now eight. Sigyn made him promise to call if he wasn’t back before eight. She would have been keeping her phone close, would have been checking the time in the hours leading up to now.

 

 

   Loki’s stride lengthens, quickens, while he tries again.

 

 

   And again.

 

 

   _And again_.

 

 

   She is not answering. The phone is not switched off, because it does ring, and ring, and ring, before almost reluctantly going to voicemail.

 

 

   Loki cannot think of a single reasonable explanation for this.

 

 

   When there are three streets between Loki and his and Sigyn’s shared apartment building, he breaks into a dead run.

 

 

   He’s calling her name before he’s even got the door unlocked – and it is locked – but when he tries to open it, the chain’s on and as far as Loki can tell every light in the whole apartment is illuminated _but he cannot see Sigyn_.

 

 

   Sigyn, who is afraid of shadows and whose decorative tastes lean towards airy, open space and pale, golden wood so that nothing can conceal itself from her.

 

 

   Sigyn, who has slept with the lights on in all the time Loki has known her, who can be woken on a bad day by a fold of her own duvet casting a little shade over her face.

 

 

   Sigyn, who can only tolerate the darkness if Loki is there with her.

 

 

   “ _Sigyn!_ Let me in! I’m sorry, I am, just let me in and I’ll speak to you, we can sort this out! Let me in!” Loki calls, frantic now.

 

 

   If something’s wrong, if anything happened while he wasn’t here, if she’s not _okay_ then it’s his fault, it’s _his fault_ and he can’t live with that, knowing that, can’t go on alone, can’t carry on without her, she has to _be_ here, _she has to be **safe** – _

 

 

   “Sigyn, _please!_ ”

 

 

   His voice carries through the crack between frame and door and echoes through their shared home, and at the end of it, as it dissipates, there is a murmur.

 

 

   “Sigyn?” He sounds every inch as desperate as he feels, and his entire body strains for another murmur, another hint that she is there and safe and well and –

 

 

   “ _Loki_...”

 

 

   He can’t see her, but he can hear her, faint and ragged, and the initial relief of hearing her voice is swept away in a fresh flood of fear.

 

 

   Loki can hear how frightened _she_ is, and that scares him.

 

 

   “Sigyn, let me in, the chain’s on, come and let me in,” he pleads, but she doesn’t reply and Loki presses his eye to the space the chain allows him and rages inwardly that all he can see is a thin sliver of their hall and the back of their sofa in the living room.

 

 

   “You weren’t here,” is the soft accusation, floating towards him borne on a wave of resentment and old hurts, and Loki leans his forehead against the doorframe and takes a deep breath.

 

 

   “I know, I’m sorry, I regret it. I’m here now. Come and let me in.”

 

 

   He waits so long for a reply that he calls her name again, honestly horribly worried that she’s not actually _able_ to come to the door, but finally she responds.

 

 

   “The phone rang,” she tells him, and he frowns, not comprehending her meaning.

 

 

   “That was me, love, I told you I’d call. I got worried when you didn’t pick up,” he says gently, hoping fervently that this is all there is, that she’s only tired and overwrought, that nothing else has happened.

 

 

   At least if it’s solely Loki’s doing, _Loki_ can undo it.

 

 

   “It wasn’t you. Earlier,” she insists. Loki runs a hand through his hair and closes his eyes tightly.

 

 

   “Sigyn, let me in. Whatever’s happened, I’ll take care of it, just please let me in,” he repeats, and he thinks he hears her move somewhere in the apartment, but her voice doesn’t sound any closer when she says,

 

 

   “I’m frightened.”

 

 

   It’s sheer force of will that keeps the anger out of Loki’s voice and allows it to remain calm and soothing when he replies,

 

 

   “I know, love. I know. But I can’t help from out here. Come and let me in. Nothing’s going to happen to you, I won’t let it. You’re safe, we both are. Just come and let me in.”

 

 

   There’s a silence then, which Loki fills with all the dark, awful thoughts of exactly what may have sent Sigyn into this spiral, and all the things he is going to do to whomever is responsible for it.

 

 

   It passes when he hears the tentative footsteps from inside the apartment grow nearer, and he catches a glimpse of Sigyn from the space between door and frame before she flings herself at the door and unhooks the chain.

 

 

   He is inside and locking the door behind him and gathering her into his arms all in one motion, and the moment her arms are locked around his waist she is howling into his chest like a broken child, wordless in her pain, and Loki leans back against the wall and holds her and tells her the truth.

 

 

   “I’ve got you, you’re safe, you’re okay, we’re okay, I’m right here, I’m not leaving you, you’re okay...”

 

 

   She folds in his grasp, smaller and smaller until it seems as if every inch of strength and dignity she has fought for and gathered to herself since they were children has collapsed around her and she is the little girl whom Loki loved so dearly again, fragile and unshielded, and it isn’t hard to bundle her up and take her to her room, which has three locks to Loki’s two.

 

 

   Locks, because Sigyn can never quite seem to feel secure enough, never quite feel properly guarded, and Loki knows why.

 

 

   It has been his task to help her find the right kind of barrier, the strongest of locks, since the very beginning of this need for tangible proof of her security.

 

 

   Locks and walls and sound defences are what help Sigyn feel some sense of refuge, of safety. It is Loki who relies on striking first and hardest, who accumulates fitting weapons and waits for the opportune moment, who spits and hisses and writhes and finds a way to poison those who wrong him. Sigyn fights back as a last resort, when steely calm fails and reason deserts her, but there is no fight left in her now, as Loki holds her as close as he can and rebuilds the fort of pillows on her bed around them.

 

 

   Loki could not fight back for her when they were children. That was then.

 

 

   Now, Loki will rebuild her walls, reinforce her doors, reset her locks, and wait for the perfect moment to obliterate whoever did this to her, because this is not ordinary fear. She has not done this to herself or been the victim of any resurgence of their accumulated childhood traumas.

 

 

   This is something else, something new, and Loki will find out what it is and make it right.

 

 

   As Loki promises himself this, he kisses Sigyn’s hair and adjusts her in his arms, and he has to rein in his fury anew when he realises that she is shaking, and how very light she feels despite weariness and fear weighing her limbs down.

 

 

   Sigyn, who is a pillar of strength, an Amazon of a woman, whose presence is as fierce and undeniable as she is herself, feels slim and cold and _small_ in Loki’s arms.

 

 

   Her fingers curl into Loki’s shirt, around the comforter he’s wrapped her in, and Loki watches them, how brittle and thin they suddenly look.

 

 

   “I’m going to keep you safe,” he tells her, and a tiny fraction of the tension in her shoulders is released.

 

 

   “We have to move,” she mumbles, as if everything she’s feeling is blocking the words, and Loki waits because he knows there’s more. There is.

 

 

   “He knows where I live,” she continues, and Loki strokes her hair away from her face.

 

 

   “Who knows?” he asks, carefully calm.

 

 

   “Guy from the library. One I yelled at.”

 

 

   “You yell at so many of them, love. Serves them right,” Loki says lightly, and she sobs in a way that sounds like a laugh gone wrong.

 

 

   “’s not that long ago. Kicked him out,” she elaborates, and Loki mentally runs through a few of the incidents she’s told him about.

 

 

   “Did he call?” he asks, taking care not to hesitate on the question, not to make it sound like a big deal, but the way she cringes into his embrace tells him that whoever she’s talking about did call, and just how big of a deal this was to her.

 

 

   “Said he’d called the library, asked for my number. Kept apologising for how he acted, went on about someone showing him he was wrong,” Sigyn explains haltingly, wetly, and Loki nods, absorbing the information.

 

 

   “We’ll change your number,” Loki tells her, already considering all the ways in which he can punish those who gave Sigyn’s number to this random person – _it’s against the rules, they’re not allowed to do that, Loki will have someone **crucified** for this invasion of Sigyn’s privacy, this disregard for her personal information’s sanctity_ – but she shakes her head.

 

 

   “We have to _move_ ,” she insists,

 

 

   “He knows where I live. This address is listed with my number if you look it up.”

 

 

   Ah. Loki had forgotten this.

 

 

   “Did he tell you that he knows where you live?” he inquires, and she shakes her head again.

 

 

   “No, no – kept asking me to forgive him for being a jackass, rambled about some friend of his – he said he called the library and asked for my number and they just _gave_ it to him, just like that. If he can do that, he can look up my address, unless they just gave _that_ away as well...”

 

 

   Her voice gets more frightened and her words come more quickly as she goes on, the tears she must have shed alone before Loki came back warping the tone although she does not resume crying, and Loki continues to stroke her hair, and considers their options.

 

 

   “We’re not moving. We don’t need to. You know who he is. I’ll take care of it.”

 

 

   Apparently something in his tone – although he was aiming for neutrality – alarms her, because she twists to look at him directly, and says,

 

 

   “Loki, you can’t have him killed.”

 

 

   “Don’t be ridiculous, I’m not going to do any such thing,” Loki assures her. It may or may not be the truth, he has yet to decide on the particulars.

 

 

   Loki can’t imagine that anyone who upsets Sigyn like this really deserves to go on living their life, even if Loki knows that Sigyn would have mentioned it as the very first thing if she had been directly threatened. That doesn’t matter to Loki, though. The mere fact of Sigyn’s fear is enough to condemn anyone in Loki’s eyes.

 

 

   “He did give me _his_ number,” she says slowly, as though offering it to him as a potential weapon, sounding reluctant to part with the information. Loki knows that this is due both to her concern that Loki will misuse it, and also her residual anxiety at the memory of having it given to her in the first place.

 

 

   “How helpful,” he remarks, and kisses her cheek.

 

 

   “Don’t give it another thought. I’ll handle it. We won’t have to move, this won’t happen again. _Nothing_ is going to happen to you, I promise.”

 

 

   She snuggles against him with a sigh of pent-up emotions fleeing her, at least for now, echoes of the child she was more visible to Loki than ever before in the ease with which she gives in to her desire to have her worries heard and resolved, and then says,

 

 

   “Stay with me.”

 

 

   “I’ll be right here,” Loki says softly, lovingly, choosing not to see it as a contrast to all the nasty things he’s even now planning for this loathsome individual who has dared to intrude upon Sigyn’s tenuous peace of mind.

 

 

   “I’m sorry I lied to you,” she tells him, and he has to work to recall what on earth she’s talking about.

 

 

   How completely inconsequential it seems now, that he should ever have been angry with her for simply trying to help Loki be happy.

 

 

   He’s almost ashamed that he was ever angry at all.

 

 

   “I know. It doesn’t matter anymore. We’re okay,” Loki murmurs, because she needs to know that it’s done, it’s over, Loki no longer cares about that, forgave her completely and without even thinking about it the moment he had cause to be truly afraid for her well-being.

 

 

   “I love you,” Sigyn states, and this Loki knows to be true, to have been true all along.

 

 

   That is all that matters.

 

 

   “I love you, too.”

 

 

   Loki doesn’t leave her, not even after she’s fallen into a restless sleep.

 

 

   Her walls need rebuilding, and until that is accomplished, she is without a shield.

 

 

   Loki will be her shield, will guard the edges of the little girl he remembers until she is ready to reclaim all the strength she has won for herself, hard-earned through long years of labour and pain, and step into who she is now again.

 

 

   Once that is done, however, Loki will have a new purpose.

 

 

   This cannot go unpunished. Damaging the frail barriers which Sigyn struggles daily to keep intact so that they might protect her from the world and from everything she carries with her into it is unforgivable, _unacceptable_ , and Loki will not allow it to set a precedent for such things.

 

 

   Sigyn’s happiness has been compromised. Loki can wait to do so, but he _will_ pay this back in kind to whoever is responsible.

 

 

   For the barest hint of a moment, Loki wonders whether Steve Rogers would think that the right course of action, but then he looks down at a sleeping Sigyn and remembers what she’s told him about loving, and about _being_ _Loki_.

 

 

   Loki falls asleep curved around Sigyn, lying between her and the door, and his last thought drifts around him at the edges of his mind like an unanchored cobweb spun from welcoming arms and paths not taken.

 

 

   Loki is glad to be home, glad to be holding someone he loves, glad to feel clear and purposeful again, but he can’t help but think that, had he made a different choice today, taken a slightly different path, the outcome would have been much the same, if not the parties involved or the sequence of events.

 

 

 


	8. System Malfunction; Do You Wish To Resume Program?

 

 

 

   It is four thirty in the afternoon on this fine day.

 

 

   Loki is leaving a meeting with Upper Management – a lovely woman named Alice who agrees entirely with him on the subject of the peon who divulged Sigyn’s personal details and contact information needing to be deprived of their employment status here at the library at the earliest convenience – with a spring in his step of the kind that only comes with the joy of having successfully destroyed one of the people partly responsible for how much coaxing it has taken Loki to convince Sigyn to return to work today, and to a degree which Loki finds appropriate given the extent of their transgression.

 

 

   Loki’s quite sure that Alice never would have gone so far as to fire the person responsible if Loki hadn’t brought up the likelihood of Sigyn pressing charges for the unlawful distribution of her personal information, but he can’t really bring himself to care. The desired result has been achieved and that’s what counts.

 

 

   He honestly can’t wait to tell Sigyn the news. Loki’s only sorry the meeting took thirty whole minutes, in light of how difficult it has been to persuade Sigyn that she’ll be alright on her own here while they’re both in the building, and how long the I’ll-see-you-shortly hug he gave her before setting off for the meeting was because _she would not let **go**_.

 

 

   Now Loki can properly start the process of showing her that taking care of this sort of thing isn’t as laborious or impossible as she feared it must be, and that there is nothing Loki can’t and won’t do for her in order to make her feel safer.

 

 

   Of course, the next step is to find the person at the root of all this and devise a suitable punishment for _him_ , but Loki’s not overly concerned about that. Sigyn has given Loki the offending phone number – and of course the idiot was fool enough to sign his _name_ to that card he sent her

 

 

   – _and which Sigyn must never, **ever** know about_.

 

 

   Loki also has the bastard’s social security number, which he is keeping in reserve for potential misuse later, should the fancy take him, but Sigyn doesn’t need to know _that_ either.

 

 

   This may seem like a lot of secrecy and deception on the surface of things, but Loki knows full well what the consequences of this information reaching Sigyn would be, and it’s just not an acceptable option.

 

 

   Loki only hopes that this most recent development will be enough to lift her spirits a tad and perhaps ease her obsessive need to have Loki by her side at all times.

 

 

   He’s also hoping that this return to normalcy in her routine and to the distraction of work will benefit her recovery.

 

 

   It’s not that he wouldn’t gladly do anything at all for her if she needs him to, but he knows it’s not good for her to sink any further into this pattern of anxiety or to start getting used to needing to follow Loki around because she can’t seem to feel safe and at ease in her own company.

 

 

   The thing is, it’s been _three days_ , and ever since Sigyn woke on the morning of that first day after their disastrous quarrel and the odious and unwelcome phone call, she hasn’t been able to cope with Loki’s absence for more than five minutes at a time.

 

 

   The only respite he has had from her company – which of course isn’t a hardship, it never can be – are brief visits to the bathroom and any time she has spent sleeping, and then only if Loki’s been able to extricate himself from her grasp without her noticing, which is an art form in itself.

 

 

   If Loki were shy about Sigyn seeing him naked, this would be a real problem, but neither of them has ever been fussy about that, so bathing hasn’t been an issue. At least, not yet.

 

 

   Loki’s been catching up on his reading while she showers, and she’s found things to do when it’s his turn.

 

 

   Still.

 

 

   It’s not _healthy_.

 

 

   They’re both very private people normally, and this excessive need for companionship is out of character for Sigyn. If she hadn’t agreed to come to work today, Loki’s not sure what he would have done, and it makes his head throb dully with the beginnings of a tension headache to recall how much wheedling and cajoling it took before she agreed.

 

 

   The memory of how scared and apprehensive she still looked even once they were on their way here is more than sufficient for Loki’s spine to feel painfully rigid and his fists to clench.

 

 

   The nervous, strained smile he saw her putting on in the mirror earlier to gloss over the perceived weakness of emotional discomfort looks so wrong on her lovely face that Loki wishes she felt secure enough to just rely on the residual anger she’s still carrying around. It’s always been her first and favourite method of self-defence and her unwillingness to use it now can’t be a good sign.

 

 

   Loki hasn’t seen her this rattled in a long time, and it worries him.

 

 

   They’ve spoken on the issue – at length, even – and she’s explained everything to him, told him exactly what’s happened and when, but none of it adds up to properly equal this level of anxiety in her, and Loki can’t stave off the lingering concern that she’s taking a step back in her personal recovery somehow.

 

 

   If that’s true, then he’s not sure how he’ll be able to handle it.

 

 

   Sigyn’s come so far, done so much with herself and healed so well in some respects already. Loki hasn’t felt able to really ask her if she knows why this has affected her so deeply, but he has his suspicions and none of them are helpful.

 

 

   Loki isn’t sure he can watch her fall apart again, not like that.

 

 

   It’s a major part of the justification behind secreting away the loathsome card which arrived for her yesterday and which is now in Loki’s possession, well hidden in a place she will never find it. Loki hasn’t opened it – he didn’t need to, there was a return address on the back so he knows its origins – and he doesn’t think he really wants to.

 

 

   It was enough having to listen to Sigyn’s account of the phone call. It was enough to watch her cry and wish she’d done things differently. It was enough to spend over an hour trying to convince her that she’s done nothing wrong and that her emotions are perfectly valid.

 

 

   Loki is not putting her through that again, and he’s not reading the card. He’s pretty sure that if he does, he’ll be irrevocably inspired to do something drastic.

 

 

   Loki’s also noticed an unsettling _personal_ development, in that since his conversation with Steve, he’s been intermittently assailed by the desire to call him again with an update on how things are going. Not just with Sigyn – although Loki’s universe _has_ revolved solely around her for the past three days – but in general, should he find anything else of interest to report.

 

 

   He’s also found himself genuinely pondering how things are coming with the dispute between Steve and his friend, and idly hoping that the outcome falls in Steve’s favour and that any broken bridges might be neatly mended, for the sake of Steve’s happiness.

 

 

   Loki can’t recall ever having fallen victim to such casual, thoughtless musing on the subject of someone else’s life and issues before, or wishing them well in their personal pursuits, and he certainly hasn’t ever experienced such an unprompted, uncalled-for, and serious consideration of divulging how his own personal pursuits are going to someone else. Not like this.

 

 

   Obviously Sigyn doesn’t count, although Loki did briefly attempt to use her as an example in a moment of panic over what all this might mean for Loki and how he sees Steve.

 

 

   It’s been three days, though, and Loki’s reached a point where he can rationalise that the myriad stresses of the situation with Sigyn are naturally leading him to wish that he could share the details of the matter with someone else. Not to unburden himself, per se, but to be able to discuss the subject of Sigyn’s well-being with someone else who knows her and cares for her to some extent.

 

 

   No man is an island, and all that.

 

 

   Since it’s been a full three days and Loki is well-practiced in all aspects of the art of denial, he’s now able to completely and further justify this rationalisation to himself without any issues whatsoever beyond the faint internal whisperings of _‘that is some serious bullshit’_ which is ever-present anyway – and therefore easy to ignore – and actually sounds a lot like Sigyn’s voice.

 

 

   Reaching this point is a personal victory for Loki and he regrets nothing.

 

 

   However, as he finally reaches the main level of the library and draws closer to the front desk, he begins to _utterly_ regret leaving Sigyn alone.

 

 

   The sound of her voice as it gains rapidly in volume assaults Loki’s senses in a terribly visceral way, and puts him on instant alert.

 

 

   To anyone else who doesn’t know her, anyone else who has never known her as a child, it may well sound as though she’s just getting angry.

 

 

   Not to Loki. Loki knows. Loki’s heard this before, remembers it from a shared childhood full of tears and shouting and anger which sounds nothing like this.

 

 

   Loki can hear the panicked edge, the jaggedness of fear and remembered hurt, and the tone of voice he will always remember most clearly as being employed when a little girl used to scream _‘don’t touch me’_ and there was nothing Loki could do to help her.

 

 

   That was then.

 

 

   By the time Loki’s close enough to see her – and of course he’s running, he’s been running since the first syllable he heard her utter – Sigyn, who is on the wrong side of the desk-fortress, a book on the floor beside her as if she had just been retrieving it when this began, helps _herself_.

 

 

   This takes the form of her hauling back and punching one James Buchanan Barnes – who is standing right in front of her and whom Loki recognises from the pictures that surfaced during Loki’s background check on the name attached to the phone number from which James Buchanan Barnes originally called Sigyn after obtaining her contact information from some idiot employed right here at the library, who is soon to be an ex-employee – squarely in the face in a truly impressive display of righteous fury, proper punching technique, and the arcing of blood from a nose most assuredly _broken_.

 

 

   Several things happen.

 

 

   Sigyn screams,

 

 

   “ ** _Fuck_** _you!_ ”

 

 

   James Buchanan – apparently ‘ _Bucky_ ’ to his friends and wide circle of sycophantic acquaintances according to the information Loki has gleaned courtesy of the internet – Barnes reels back, clutching his face and swearing indiscriminately, indistinctly, and rather wetly.

 

 

   Loki reaches Sigyn in time to hold her back in her apparent desire to strike James Barnes again, much to her apparent displeasure if her struggling is any indicator.

 

 

   Steve Rogers – whom Loki hadn’t seen or noticed or heard coming at _all_ – appears at James Barnes’ side, a look of angry concern on his face as he wrenches the odious Barnes’ hands away from the almost-definitely-broken nose and examines the damage.

 

 

   The damage appears copious and therefore sufficient, but Sigyn remains unappeased and Steve Rogers is far from pitying as he proceeds to shout,

 

 

   “Bucky you _idiot_ , what the hell did you think you were _doing_ – ”

 

 

   which is almost drowned in Sigyn’s screeches of,

 

 

   “Let me _go_ , I’m going to _kill_ him!”

 

 

   It’s nothing short of a miracle that Steve seems to hear Loki’s incredulous, furious,

 

 

   “You _know_ him?”

 

 

   But apparently Steve does, because he turns to look at Loki guiltily, concern and anger leaking out of him in waves and says,

 

 

   “He’s my best friend,” as though he’s both ashamed of this and upset about it all at once.

 

 

   Loki is spared the ordeal of replying to this revelation by Sigyn, who very rightly says,

 

 

   “ _That’s_ your best friend? You deserve better.”

 

 

   Loki is not spared the stab of pain to his chest at the instantly stricken and wounded look spilling into Steve’s eyes as though Sigyn has opened an artery of emotion somewhere inside him and he’s haemorrhaging from old wounds he’s been ignoring for years.

 

 

   Loki sees this, and thinks, _that’s not right, that isn’t what I wanted_.

 

 

   Loki recognises this for what it is and is only saved from his own on-the-spot breakdown by his grip on Sigyn’s arms and the tension in her movements telling him that his attention is needed elsewhere – externally – and that he can’t afford to focus on his own issues right now.

 

 

   “I’m sorry, I’ll get him out of here,” Steve says, quiet and regretful, and Loki wants to reach out to him and touch him and somehow communicate that no one in their right mind could blame Steve for the idiocy of James Barnes, and that even though Loki probably doesn’t fall within that description, he still doesn’t blame Steve for any of this, _can’t_ blame Steve for any of this.

 

 

   Loki wants to tell him that it’s fine, that he understands, that none of this is Steve’s doing and that he shouldn’t have to clean up after it like this, shouldn’t take on the responsibility of other people’s blatant stupidities.

 

 

   Loki wants to demand that Steve never apologise for anything not directly his fault ever again because it’s too unfair and he doesn’t deserve it.

 

 

   Loki desperately wants to show or tell or declare in some way – any way – that this doesn’t change anything that is Loki and Steve, if there even is such a thing, because Loki can’t bear for this to spoil something he hasn’t even begun to deal with quantifying yet.

 

 

   Loki wishes he knew how to convey to Steve and Steve only how he feels right now, and more than anything how he feels about Steve specifically, but he knows that even if what he feels was so easy to transmit through looks or gestures – even to someone who knows him well, which Steve doesn’t, not yet, not well enough for any of Loki’s purposes, which is still incredibly scary and confusing – even Loki isn’t sure what he’s feeling, and a torrent of **_this isn’t your fault we’re still okay I still want you I really want to see you I’m just not quite ready I’m so sorry can’t we please just forget this and pretend it doesn’t affect us_** wouldn’t be helpful to anyone.

 

 

   There’s no way for Loki to do any of this, though, no way he’s been taught or can see intuitively in this moment, but even though he knows that, he still feels that his,

 

 

   “Good,” is a pathetically empty and lacking response.

 

 

   So disappointed is he in his own lack of ability to find something better, something more to say to a Steve who looks so disheartened and unhappy and angry that Loki feels oddly guilty for it even though none of this is his fault either, that he can’t move past it until Steve has pulled a largely unresisting James Barnes out of the building and Sigyn has stopped struggling and is hugging Loki instead, and all Loki can do is hug back mechanically and stare at the doors.

 

 

   Loki ends up walking Sigyn silently to the staff room and just sitting with her, neither of them speaking, every line of Sigyn’s body vibrating leftover anger and the slow onset of paranoia and depression that follows every high-stress conflict of this nature, Loki trying to figure out how to fix this – fix all of it, both of them, Steve, everything.

 

 

   It soon becomes apparent, however, that someone has alerted the authorities who have in turn conferred with Alice on the subject of this violent episode on the main floor of her library, because they are both called up over the announcement system – usually only utilised to inform people of how long they have until closing time to extricate themselves from the corners of the place and find an exit – and once in her office, they are faced with a series of questions.

 

 

   Yes, Sigyn is aware that punching someone like that is against the law.

 

 

   Yes, she did so because she felt under threat.

 

 

   Yes, she knows the individual whom she punched in full view of dozens of library-goers.

 

 

   Yes, she can provide them with the name of this individual.

 

 

   No, she has no relationship with the individual in question.

 

 

   Yes, this person has been bothering her for a while.

 

 

   Yes, this is the person who originally called the library to obtain her contact information under false pretences –

 

 

   _yes_ , Alice is aware of that having occurred as of today and that part of the situation is already being handled.

 

 

   Yes, Sigyn has been contacted by this individual on her personal number, to her great distress.

 

 

   Loki feels the needs to underline the distress involved, and also the level of unwanted contact on the table here.

 

 

   It is at this point that Loki is forced to reveal the existence of the card that is safely stashed away at home, and Sigyn reacts predictably to the joint revelations of Loki’s deception and the card addressed to her.

 

 

   “What card? What are you talking about? He mentioned a card as well – said he’d sent it to the address I’m listed at – do you have that? When did it arrive? Why didn’t you _tell_ me?” she shouts, and Loki closes his eyes against the colossal clusterfuck this day has become and sighs.

 

 

   “You were so upset already, I couldn’t give it to you. I couldn’t hand it over and watch you be so afraid all over again. It was delivered while you were sleeping, it didn’t come through the post, it was hand-delivered by a courier. I hid it so you wouldn’t know,” he explains wearily, opening his eyes to watch her bright, tear-filled eyes and the angry set of her mouth.

 

 

   “I’m sorry.”

 

 

   He’s not expecting the hug just yet, but it’s welcome all the same, and over his head he hears Sigyn wave away one of the officers’ suggestion that she be angrier at this theft of an item addressed to her.

 

 

   Loki doesn’t care about any of it anymore right now.

 

 

   Loki is tired and drained and wants to take Sigyn home so they can figure out how they both feel.

 

 

   Loki does not want to deal with his employer, whose expression has gone from disapproval to concern at the unfolding tale of how someone has been actively stalking one of her employees, or the officers who are keeping them all here in this office to ask questions.

 

 

   “Miss, do you mind if we can get the number from you? We’d like to call this man up and ask him about this incident, if we may,” one of them says, and Loki hears and sees Sigyn let go of him and dig through her pocket for her phone and then relay the number to the officer who takes it down.

 

 

   Loki also hears and sees that officer leave the room, and his partner resume questioning of Sigyn, but dully and as if from far away.

 

 

   What Loki’s really seeing and hearing, what’s clearest and foremost in his mind and eyes, is Steve’s apology for something he had no part in causing and every part in rectifying, and the look in those blue eyes when Loki could say nothing of worth to him in that situation. No word of reassurance, no offer of support, nothing to indicate how little Loki holds Steve responsible for this event or of less value because of what happened.

 

 

   Loki hears and sees the second officer re-enter the room and say something about how ‘Mr. Barnes’ was excessively emphatic about the entire incident being his fault and that Sigyn’s actions were wholly justifiable and right, and Loki also sees and hears the two upholders of the law take their leave and promise that no further action will be taken in this matter, and Alice repeatedly reassuring Sigyn that she will not be punished for any of this and that the employee who disgracefully divulged her details will be let go for their behaviour, but it doesn’t feel real until Sigyn takes his hand and pulls him up and they leave together.

 

 

   They can go home, she says. Replacements have been called in.

 

 

   They can go home and hide.

 

 

   Loki is already hiding, much more effectively than by simple means of locking his door behind him. Loki is hiding in his own head, the way a small child ‘hides’ just beneath the water in the tub at bath-time, except he’s not doing it to try and scare his caretakers or see how long he can hold his breath.

 

 

   Loki _is_ hiding, but he can’t hide from the fatigue and he can’t hide from Steve Roger’s blue eyes.

 

 

   It’s not until he and Sigyn are home, and curled up in her bed, holding hands and choosing not to speak, that Loki says,

 

 

   “I’m so sorry. I love you. Forgive me?” and Sigyn says,

 

 

   “It’s okay. I love you too. Forgive me?”

 

 

   It’s only one half of the problem Loki needs to address that _is_ addressed by this – only one of the people he’s really speaking to who is hearing him and giving him what he needs in return – but it’s alright for now, _just_ for now, and he can rest his forehead against Sigyn’s and kiss her hands and not have to tell her ‘always’ because she knows.

 

 

   They can talk about this when they’re ready to stop hiding, and meanwhile, Loki can figure out a way to hide from himself a little better, and to express the rest of what he needs to in the way it needs to be heard and received.

 

 

   Loki wants to make that happen, and needs it a little more than he can contain.

 

 

   They can talk about it when they’re ready to; Loki hopes that’s how it works.

 

 

 


	9. Let's Go Over This One More Time - From The Feeling!

 

 

 

   “I feel like we should talk,” Sigyn says, continuing to poke her spoon into the yoghurt she poured for herself half an hour ago and has yet to actually taste.

 

 

   “I think we should,” Loki agrees neutrally, putting down his phone and looking at her.

 

 

   “I’m not blaming you for the card thing,” Sigyn begins slowly,

 

 

   “But... were you ever going to tell me about that, or were you just going to pretend it never happened?”

 

 

   Loki considers it.

 

 

   “I might have told you eventually,” he allows, and Sigyn nods.

 

 

   “Okay. That’s... not ideal, but okay. I understand. I’m really happy that you tried so hard to take care of me, but now that I know, I think I should see it,” she says carefully, and Loki narrows his eyes at her as his mouth twists in displeasure.

 

 

   “That I do not agree with,” he says firmly,

 

 

   “And I’m not buying how calm you are this morning either. You never even told me what that imbecile said to you to trigger that outburst yesterday, and I know whatever it was must have been bad or you’d never have reacted like that. I am not giving you the card until you tell me what he said.”

 

 

   It’s all true. Loki is deeply suspicious of the odd lack of any real, definable mood in Sigyn since she got up this morning. There’s been no clinging, there’ve been no attempts to really discuss any of this, and Loki knows that if she were really feeling as back-to-normal as she is pretending, she’d have eaten a proper breakfast and tried to make Loki talk about everything that happened yesterday, and especially the fact that Steve was there and the revelation of him apparently being Barnes’ best friend.

 

 

   Whatever’s going on inside Sigyn is new and possibly something she knows Loki won’t approve of, since she’s taking such pains to mask how she feels about it.

 

 

   Loki does not like the idea.

 

 

   “I’m _not_ calm,” Sigyn snaps,

 

 

   “I’m _tired_ , and I’m upset, and I’m trying to figure a lot of things out, okay, and I don’t have the energy to deal with all of it right now so I’m just trying to take it one issue at a time!”

 

 

   Well now that’s more like it.

 

 

   “You’re the one who’s always telling me to talk about how I feel, so let’s talk. Tell me what you’re figuring out, tell me what you’re feeling,” Loki suggests, and Sigyn makes an angry sound and folds her arms across her chest.

 

 

   “You won’t understand,” she insists,

 

 

   “You won’t understand, and you won’t listen properly, it’ll be a waste of time, and I’ll just get mad at you again, and I don’t want that – I can’t _handle_ that right now. We are not talking about me.”

 

 

   “Yes we are,” Loki argues,

 

 

   “Because I can’t sit here and watch you do this to yourself. The second-guessing, the moping around – it’s not healthy. Why is it that when something’s wrong with _me_ , we need to talk about it, and when something’s wrong with _you_ , we have to pretend there’s no problem at all?”

 

 

   “That’s it!” Sigyn pushes away from the table and gets up, snatching up her bowl and marching to the sink where she slams it down so hard Loki’s sure he hears it crack.

 

 

   “You want to know why we don’t talk about what’s wrong with me?” she asks angrily, pushing her hair off her face as Loki rises and walks towards her.

 

 

   “It’s because you hate it. You don’t like hearing about things that upset me – you take it all to heart – and then we’re both miserable and angry, and...”

 

 

   She’s wiping tears away from her eyes now, and Loki reaches for her hands and grabs them, holds them still.

 

 

   “I will listen to whatever you need to tell me,” he says sincerely,

 

 

   “Because I love you and I want to help if I can. You take things to heart as well, you know, and I always feel terrible for burdening you with it when I’m the one who’s a mess, even though I know it’s stupid, and I’m sure you feel the same about offloading on me, but that’s what I’m _here_ for.”

 

 

   “And if I say things you don’t agree with?” she asks, and Loki shrugs.

 

 

   “I’m not in charge of you and your feelings. If you say something I don’t agree with, I can offer my opinion, but it won’t change anything for you. Think of all the stupid things I’ve done and felt even after you’ve told me it was idiocy. That goes both ways,” he says, as reasonably as he can, and Sigyn bites her lip.

 

 

   “Come and sit down and tell me what’s making you so angry,” Loki tells her, and she allows herself to be pulled away from the sink and towards the living room and the sofa. They sit down, settle in, Sigyn pulls one of her legs up and rests her chin on her knee.

 

 

   “Do you think Steve is a good judge of character?” Sigyn asks, and Loki frowns.

 

 

   “Steve? Why do you ask? We’re talking about you, Steve isn’t a you-issue,” he says slowly, and Sigyn wraps both arms around her leg and looks away.

 

 

   “After yesterday, he kind of is,” she responds, and Loki lets that sink in.

 

 

   “Okay... Well... I think Steve is one of those people who really wants to see and believe the best in everyone, and sometimes he’s probably right, and sometimes people probably disappoint him,” Loki tries, but he knows he’s being vague and he can’t really bring himself to dig into the matter.

 

 

   “So far he’s been right about you,” Sigyn says, and Loki raises an eyebrow.

 

 

   “Stop trying to change the topic,” he tells her, and she closes her eyes.

 

 

   “I’m _not_ changing the topic, I’m trying to get to my point, and it’s difficult, so it’s taking a little longer than it otherwise would,” she snaps.

 

 

   “Okay, I understand. At your own pace,” Loki says soothingly, and she opens her eyes again.

 

 

   “Thank you,” she says wryly,

 

 

   “I’m so glad that’s allowed.”

 

 

   “Sigyn.”

 

 

   “Oh, fine!” she flings at him, and then crosses her legs, folding her arms around herself in a pseudo-hug and leaning her head on the back of the sofa as she stares at some spot on the wall behind Loki.

 

 

   “I ask because Steve said this Barnes guy is his best friend, and... I just can’t make that fit, okay? Steve’s a good person. I can’t see him calling someone like that his _best friend_ unless he means it, and he’s so honest I just don’t see him lying about it because what would be the reason, you know? So I don’t... I don’t understand it. Why would he consider someone like that to be his best friend?”

 

 

   She gathers her hair over one shoulder then, pursing her lips and frowning, and then continues.

 

 

   “So I thought, maybe he’s just not a very good judge of character, but he _is_ , Loki – he sees _you_ for who _you_ are – I swear if you’re opening your mouth to say something about blaming that on that one time you blew him, I _will_ throw something at you!”

 

 

   Loki obediently closes his mouth and waits for her to go on. He didn’t really want to argue that point again, he’s ceased believing in it which makes it difficult to commit fully to the argument, and anyway it would only distract him from the matter at hand, which is not what he wants.

 

 

   “I thought so. Anyway, Steve _is_ a good judge of character, he’s _not_ a liar, and I have been wracking my brains trying to think of a single good reason why he’d claim that this idiot is his best friend if he wasn’t and _I just can’t find one_ , so the only explanation is that he’s telling the truth, but why the hell would he associate with someone like that? Steve’s about the farthest thing from a sexist degenerate I can think of – why the hell would he choose someone like that for a best friend, it doesn’t make any _sense!_ ”

 

 

   Loki can follow her reasoning perfectly, and he’ll agree, it all looks very odd, but he’s not as far along in this as she is, clearly, because he’s certainly not yet at the point of concluding that,

 

 

   “This Barnes guy _can’t_ be as bad as he seems if he’s Steve’s best friend,” but Sigyn seems to be there because that’s exactly what she says, and Loki’s only comfort is that she looks and sounds as confused and lost as he feels.

 

 

   “Let’s not go to extremes,” Loki says uneasily,

 

 

   “That’s insanity. Look at the facts – maybe he’s been lying to Steve all along about what kind of person he is and Steve just never questioned him because he didn’t have any reason to do so!”

 

 

   Sigyn gives him a flat, disappointed look.

 

 

   “That’s uncharitable, Loki. Steve’s smarter than that. Give him some credit,” she scolds.

 

 

   “I am! I’m giving him plenty of credit! He’s honest and kind-hearted and he’d never want to believe bad things of someone he’s fond of – maybe Barnes wasn’t so bad at some point but it’s escalated with time and Steve’s just never been around to see it in action or doesn’t want to think the worst of his friend,” Loki cries, a little offended that Sigyn thinks that Loki could believe that Steve’s some sort of naïve moron.

 

 

   To Loki’s relief, Sigyn appears to consider it seriously, but it’s short-lived when she shrugs again and frowns unhappily.

 

 

   “Maybe you’re right. I just... I feel like I should suspend disbelief, just a little bit. For Steve. I like him, Loki, he’s a genuinely good person. I’m not sure I like how I acted now that I know that Barnes is Steve’s friend. He’s clearly an idiot, but – I just – should I apologise? I think I broke his nose...”

 

 

   Loki takes a deep breath to steady himself and then pastes on his most reassuring, least judgmental look.

 

 

   “Darling, I’ll support you whatever you choose to do here, but in my opinion, you’re over-thinking this. What you did was a reasonable reaction to the way he behaved towards you. You really don’t have anything to apologise for. The man was basically stalking you. He was rude and unpleasant and he made you feel unsafe at home and at work. You’re entitled to react with whatever degree of violence you feel is necessary in a situation like that, and I really don’t think you need to feel guilty about it just because this guy is Steve’s best friend. Steve’s not responsible for Barnes’ actions, and I don’t think he’ll hold yours against you. Like you said, Steve’s a sensible person. He certainly didn’t seem too pleased with his friend, and I can’t imagine he’d blame you for what you did,” Loki says diplomatically, while Sigyn bites her lip and weaves a little braid into her hair.

 

 

   “He said... He said he’d make me accept his apology eventually, and that... that one day, he’d marry me...” she says quietly, and Loki just gapes at her.

 

 

   “Then he said ‘ _so there_ ’, like it was a done deal and there was nothing more to say on the subject, and... I hit him.”

 

 

   “That is...” Loki trails off, because what is it, exactly? Disturbing? Creepy? Really, _really_ unexpected?

 

 

   Well, it’s all of those things, really, but mostly it’s just... weird. It’s not exactly classic stalker threats. Loki can’t decide whether it’s the most ridiculous thing he’s ever heard or whether he should seriously look into taking Sigyn to another country to live permanently - somewhere far, **_far_** away from this person who has apparently gone from ‘ _I’d like to take you out and somehow bullshit you into having it off with me_ ’ straight to ‘ _I am going to marry the hell out of you, **deal with it**_ ’.

 

 

   “I just... It was so fucking _stupid_ , you know? And the way he said it – like it was a point of _pride_ and I had no say in it and should just accept the inevitable – I just wanted to kill him. I mean, how _dare_ he?”

 

 

   Loki agrees with her, the presumption is off the charts, but her voice goes from heated outrage to nervousness as she more quietly asks,

 

 

   “Do _you_ think I overreacted?”

 

 

   “No. I think you were right to be angry and he had it coming for being an unpleasant, presumptuous bastard,” Loki replies promptly, and Sigyn twitches a little, tearful smile.

 

 

   “You don’t think Steve is going to hate me for this?”

 

 

   “He doesn’t. We’ve – I’ve – _we’ve_ been texting,” Loki admits, unsure if he’s really ready to admit this. He’s certainly not ready to admit that the extent of his participation in the texting exercise has been to all but swoon upon waking this morning and reading Steve’s missives, and to fire off a quick ‘ _I believe you. We’re okay. I’ll let you know._ ’ before he could reconsider. Steve has yet to reply, but Loki figures that he’ll have his own stuff to deal with today and isn’t expecting an immediate response.

 

 

   “I’m really glad to hear that,” Sigyn confesses, low and scratchy with emotion, and Loki reaches over and strokes her hand.

 

 

   “For what it’s worth, Darling, I don’t think you have any reason to feel badly over what you did, but I do understand if you’re upset about losing control like that. It’s very easy to start second-guessing and feeling guilty when that happens, but just... try and remember that you did nothing wrong and that even though you lashed out, it was justified in that situation and nothing truly awful really came of it. I don’t think you need to worry about apologising to that idiot,” he tells her sincerely, and she sniffles slightly and nods.

 

 

   “Thank you. I know, I just... I’m glad you were there. It could have gone much worse.”

 

 

   “But it didn’t,” Loki reminds her softly.

 

 

   “It didn’t,” she agrees, then swallows and says,

 

 

   “I still want the card. It was addressed to me, and I think I should see it.”

 

 

   “Okay,” Loki says easily,

 

 

   “Do you want me to get it now, or..?”

 

 

   “Can you... can you get it now, and just... just sit here with me while I read it?” she asks, and Loki smiles.

 

 

   “Of course, love.”

 

 

   It’s the work of two minutes to go to his room and retrieve the offending piece of stationary. Loki isn’t able to prevent himself from holding it rather gingerly by a corner of the envelope as though it’s something gross, but he places it neatly in Sigyn’s lap and resumes his seat while she smoothes her fingertips over the paper and frowns.

 

 

   “It came like this?” she asks hesitantly, and Loki nods.

 

 

   “Yes.”

 

 

   “No postmark? No stamp?”

 

 

   “None.”

 

 

   Sigyn nods but doesn’t speak, and she doesn’t make any move towards actually opening the thing.

 

 

   “Darling, do you really want to – ”

 

 

   “I’m fine. I want to do this,” she cuts him off, glancing up briefly with assurance in her eyes, and Loki watches her return her attention to the envelope and very slowly slide her thumbnail along the ridge of the closure. She opens it carefully, and slides the enclosed folded piece of paper out as if afraid that it contains glitter or anthrax or something equally hideous and messy.

 

 

   She takes a few moments to read through it, and Loki waits impatiently, already decided that if this blasted thing makes her cry, not even the thought of Steve’s disappointment will save Barnes from Loki’s wrath.

 

 

   “It’s not...” Sigyn begins uncertainly, and Loki leans forward a little.

 

 

   “It’s not that bad,” she finally says, looking up as though bewildered by this.

 

 

   “There aren’t even any spelling mistakes,” she adds, as though she’s been somehow cheated of having that particular expectation fulfilled.

 

 

   “Can I see?” Loki asks carefully, fully aware that there is no way he can pose that question without Sigyn knowing exactly how badly Loki wants to examine this letter. She doesn’t hand it over though.

 

 

   “I don’t... You won’t tear it up?”

 

 

   “Of course not. It’s evidence in case we ever want to file a restraining order,” Loki informs her, and she proffers it with a troubled look.

 

 

   Before he’s even touched it though, she pulls it back sharply, putting it back in the envelope and proclaiming,

 

 

   “I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to talk about this anymore. I’m throwing this away.”

 

 

   “Sigyn. Hand it over,” Loki demands, reaching for it, and she scowls at him.

 

 

   “Fine,” she says, tossing it into his lap as if she doesn’t care and then crossing her arms and looking away.

 

 

   Loki opens the thing quickly, in case she decides to make an unexpected grab for it, and scans the contents.

 

 

   There really aren’t any spelling mistakes.

 

 

   It’s not even remotely rude, either, which Loki finds quite surprising, and it’s only a few lines long.

 

 

   Really, it’s not that bad. Barnes neatly apologises for the way he behaved towards Sigyn in the library, admits fault, takes responsibility, asks to be forgiven for his actions, and concludes with an entirely casual and non-threatening comment on the subject of the original coffee invitation remaining open even if Sigyn should want to cash it in just to chastise him in public once again. The insufferable idiot even manages to make that sound like it might just be a bit of fun.

 

 

   Loki is hard pressed to find fault with any of it, except maybe the last part which Loki is certain could be construed in such a way as to appear pushy and as if Barnes didn’t take Sigyn seriously when she first gave him what for, but really, apart from that, _it’s not that bad_.

 

 

   He puts it back in the envelope and places it gingerly in Sigyn’s lap.

 

 

   “Satisfied?” she snaps, and Loki shrugs.

 

 

   “It could be worse. Hang on to it,” he suggests, and Sigyn shoots him a sly look.

 

 

   “Like you don’t have Steve’s card tucked away in your room somewhere,” she says, and Loki bristles.

 

 

   “That’s _completely_ different!”

 

 

   “I never said it was the same. Even if I do keep this, it doesn’t _matter_. I’m not going to press charges, for now – mostly because of Steve, I feel like I owe him that – but you’re right, it could come in useful,” Sigyn puts forward, and Loki sighs.

 

 

   “I don’t understand why you’re upset with me when he’s the idiot who upset you in the first place. I’m blameless,” he insists, and Sigyn rubs her forehead with the back of her hand and chews on her bottom lip before replying.

 

 

   “I’m not upset with you. I’m upset with all of it. I really don’t...”

 

 

   She takes a deep breath and then shudders all over and says,

 

 

   “I feel like everything that happens – everything that happens to me, everything I think or feel or do – all comes back to _them_ , and what we went through when we were little. Everything always comes back to that, and I feel like I never really escaped at all.”

 

 

   _Oh_.

 

 

   Loki leans forward and puts his arms around her gently, kissing her hair and wishing he knew the right way to respond.

 

 

   “I think...”

 

 

   It’s not how he wants to start, so he regroups while she settles against him and rests her head on his shoulder.

 

 

   “You know how whenever I get upset and start feeling guilty about things or about how I feel, and you tell me that what happened to us wasn’t our fault and we’re not responsible for how it affected us, and all we can try to do is make the best of it and just rejoice that we’re here now and we can try and rebuild from here?” he asks, and he feels her nod.

 

 

   “Well, it’s true, isn’t it? It wasn’t our fault. It was awful, and it left scars, and it made certain things more difficult for us, even now, _but it wasn’t our fault_. It still isn’t. It takes time – it wasn’t that long ago, you can’t expect to recover completely from one day to the next. Some things we may never recover completely from.”

 

 

   Her breath hitches and Loki goes on.

 

 

   “We’ve come so far, love. We really have. And it’s – we’re doing really well, all things considered. You can’t blame yourself for feeling certain things or for being a little confused as to what you want or how you want it. It’s like you keep telling me. We deserve to be happy. We can’t get stuck on all the ways we can’t make that happen yet because we’re not ready. That’s not our fault. We just have to focus on all the things we _can_ do, and on how much progress we’ve made already.”

 

 

   She says nothing, and Loki takes a deep breath before venturing,

 

 

   “You know, there was a time you would have just beaten someone like Barnes to a pulp the first time he tried anything on with you. However he might have deserved it, you’ve come a long way from that. Hell, you gave fair warning. I think you actually kept to the ‘three strikes’ thing, even. Isn’t that something to be proud of?”

 

 

   She emits a watery little laugh, and Loki smiles, deeply relieved that at least some of this seems to be hitting the right mark.

 

 

   “You know there are still days where I don’t want to leave the apartment. I go days without looking in a mirror. And I know it’s stupid and irrational, and I know I have them to blame for doing that to me, and I hate them for it, but... I hate myself as well. I feel weak for giving in to it even when I know how ridiculous it is. And you know that, and you make me feel less awful about myself because you keep reminding me that I’m not in control of those feelings – they were instilled in me by others – and that I can’t blame myself for them or hate myself for not being able to just brush them off.”

 

 

   Loki turns her and grips her by the shoulders and pushes their foreheads together and tells her, very softly,

 

 

   “Everything you feel is valid, and should be properly considered. Even the bits that didn’t originate from you, or the parts that don’t seem quite right. You are not a lesser person for being affected by those things, or for reacting to them, and I am endlessly proud of you for everything you’ve accomplished since all of that, and of how far you’ve come. I can’t fix it for you, but I can remind you that you are not what you went through, and that who you’ve become despite all of that is someone strong, and beautiful, and brave, and that I love you even when you’re a little more affected by who we used to be than usual, because that isn’t your fault, and it doesn’t change who you are.”

 

 

   “Loki...”

 

 

   “It’s too easy to get locked into that cycle of fear and anger and guilt and self-loathing. You’re allowed to just feel what you’re feeling. You’re allowed to react and to be angry, and you’re always, always allowed to express what you’re feeling even if you’re not sure it makes sense, or that it’s something you ‘should’ be feeling.”

 

 

   She’s smiling, albeit weakly, and she lets him kiss her briefly, says,

 

 

   “Thank you. I love you.”

 

 

   It’s not just an empty reply when Loki tells her,

 

 

   “I love you, too.”

 

 

   She settles against him again, takes his hand, and asks,

 

 

   “So... You’ve been texting Steve?”

 

 

   “Just a little. He just wanted to know whether we were okay.”

 

 

   “That’s good. That’s a positive sign.”

 

 

   “He’s not upset with you, you know. He has more sense than that,” Loki tells her again, and she smiles more brightly.

 

 

   “I know. That’s why I like him. That’s why you like him, too,” she observes, and Loki doesn’t comment. Instead he says,

 

 

   “The other day we had a phone conversation that didn’t end in tears.”

 

 

   Sigyn twists and sits up and faces him, face aglow with excitement.

 

 

   “What? Sweetheart, that’s wonderful! I’m so proud of you! When? Why didn’t you tell me?”

 

 

   When Loki doesn’t meet her gaze and remains silent, she nods.

 

 

   “Oh. I see. The other day. Well, that doesn’t matter – I’m so glad the two of you spoke! What did you talk about?”

 

 

   “You, actually. I told him I wasn’t angry with him, and then we talked about how it’s always harder to forgive the people you’re closest to because any transgression on their part always seems so much more awful. He said he’d had an argument with his best friend over some things that needed saying, and he was feeling bad about it. We just... talked....” Loki tells her, and then,

 

 

   “I... Do you suppose he meant Barnes?”

 

 

   Sigyn shrugs, expression thoughtful.

 

 

   “It’s possible. He did go on about some friend or other telling him what a jerk he’d been and that he needed to sort himself out – it’s not unthinkable that he was being unbearable and Steve told him to get his shit together. And Steve _was_ there to see it... I spoke to him.” She glances at the floor guiltily.

 

 

   “It’s okay,” Loki tells her,

 

 

   “That’s all over and done with.” She squeezes his hand gratefully and then, as if struck by a thought, says,

 

 

   “It’s funny how actually, it all comes back to Steve.”

 

 

   “Funny in what way?” Loki asks, not quite sure if he follows, and Sigyn tangles her fingers in her hair and presses her lips together.

 

 

   “Well, I suppose because... He’s so unassuming. I don’t think he’d countenance how important he really is to other people’s lives.”

 

 

   Loki has to agree. If there was ever a humble, self-sacrificing person, it’s Steve Rogers. He likely genuinely wouldn’t understand how anyone could consider him central to proceedings at all.

 

 

   “So... did you tell him how you feel?” she presses, and Loki blinks.

 

 

   “How I feel?” he asks, feeling a touch stupid, and Sigyn nods.

 

 

   “Yes. Did you tell him that really, you want to get married and have lots of sex and babies?”

 

 

   Loki scowls, but there’s no real anger behind it.

 

 

   “You are not Alan Rickman,” he says loftily,

 

 

   “And you don’t know a thing about it. I’m saving that one for when I decide I want to give the poor thing a heart attack.”

 

 

   “You don’t think he’d be open to it?” Sigyn inquires, and Loki raises an eyebrow.

 

 

   “Let’s just say I’m not sure how well it would go down,” he replies, really not sure how to phrase his suspicion that Steve would just look at him with those absurd, wounded blue eyes and wish him good luck in his future endeavours in the realm of family-building.

 

 

   “You usually love talking about how well you go down,” Sigyn points out, a wickedness to her smile now, and Loki huffs.

 

 

   “If I’m not allowed to use that one anymore then you can’t just take it over like that!” he protests, and she shrugs.

 

 

   “Deal with it. But that’s not important. Did you or did you not tell him that what you really want is to put a ring on it?”

 

 

   Loki shifts uncomfortably, picking at his sleeve, until Sigyn nudges him with her foot in warning and he grudgingly mumbles,

 

 

   “I... may have told him that I really would like to see him at some point.”

 

 

   “Well, when it comes to you, that’s basically the same thing. Is he aware of that?” she presses, and Loki shrugs, very studiously avoiding her gaze.

 

 

   “We haven’t discussed it. He seemed... pleased. When I said it. That’s something,” he allows, and Sigyn rolls her eyes in exasperation.

 

 

   “Of course it’s _something_ ; the boy’s crazy about you. Text him! Set up a meeting. Invite him round for tea and blowjobs. Whatever the protocol is these days. What were you just telling me? We deserve to be happy. Steve makes you happy. I’m sure if you ever bothered telling your therapist what’s going on in your life currently, he’d agree with my diagnosis and approve my prescription. One measure of conscientious blue-eyed blonde, to be taken by at will,” she declares, and Loki smiles, a soft, private thing that manifests solely behind his eyes.

 

 

   “Maybe I will. When he texts me back. You know he said...”

 

 

   “What did he say?”

 

 

   Loki’s smile reaches his lips as he divulges that,

 

 

   “He said he’d be there. When I was ready.”

 

 

   “And are you?” Sigyn asks, leaning forward and studying Loki’s features intently, and Loki looks down, his smile warming his face a touch uncomfortably now.

 

 

   “I... I think so.”

 

 

   “Oh, Loki...” Sigyn expels, reaching out and hugging him tightly,

 

 

   “We really have come a long way.”

 

 

 


	10. I Am Happy You Are Happy, Let Us Be Happy Together

 

 

 

   Sigyn is brushing her hair.

 

 

   She’s standing in the hall, light from the windows of the living room and kitchen pouring in on her and illuminating the image from both sides, in front of the full length gilt-framed mirror that absorbs and sends light back to pick out every sparking dust mote travelling through the room and highlight every glittering strand.

 

 

   Loki has always loved watching her brush her hair. The way it shines and roils like some living, metallic-scaled creature is hypnotic and soothing, and it takes Loki back to afternoons where he’d undo her plaits just so he could brush out the waves and re-braid them.

 

 

   It’s a pleasantly nostalgic contentment that washes over him as he lounges on the sofa, bathed in the concentrated warmth of the sun from the windows, simply enjoying how lovely Sigyn looks.

 

 

   He knows she scoffs at it, but personally Loki has taken pride in how beautiful she is ever since they were small, even though obviously he had no hand in making her so. At one stage he was even slightly jealous of how her burnished, golden beauty allowed her to so neatly fit in and stand out all at the same time, but he got over that once he allowed himself to understand that all she really wanted was to disappear, and how little she cared for the people whom she on the surface of things ‘belonged’ with.

 

 

   He’s never truly stopped being proud of how this lovely, glowing girl preferred him to everyone else, then, and he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to stop gleaning a little much-needed amour-propre from how she still prefers him even today.

 

 

   Today, Loki is glorying in a sense of very general, overall contentment.

 

 

   Given that this happens so rarely, he is determined to fully enjoy every last second, but that doesn’t stop him giving thought to what’s brought this on.

 

 

   Of course, it begins with how much happier and more emotionally settled Sigyn’s been since they talked.

 

 

   Loki can’t be happy – much less content – if she’s unsettled, so that’s been a huge factor. Watching her routine normalise again and her moods smooth out has been very calming after all this recent stress.

 

 

   Then of course, there’s been how naturally he and Steve seem to have fallen into the habit of texting one another.

 

 

   Nothing too serious, nothing too committed, just... talking. The way they did during that one phone call that didn’t end horribly.

 

 

   It’s comforting to Loki that he has found a way to do that – to just _talk_ – because he can’t recall ever having been gifted with that particular ability before. Just talking, without any undercurrents or suspicions lacing his words, without any real idea where he wants it to go...

 

 

   It’s a little scary, because there’s no static goal in mind for Loki, for once it’s just unscripted discourse, almost innocent in its lack of purpose, but at the same time, it’s nice to give in to that.

 

 

   They talk about art and how their day’s going and what they’re doing, and this thread of connection between them seems so much stronger to Loki now than it did before. Despite how casual it appears, it’s still an insight into Steve as a person, and Loki delights in every one of these for the simple reason that it secures his view of who that person really is. It bolsters his initial judgment of Steve’s character, and this is both encouraging and reassuring to Loki.

 

 

   He writhes a little in remembered glee at a text he received two days ago where Steve uncharacteristically insinuated a compliment to Loki into an otherwise mundane summary of what he was up to – hedge-trimming or some such, that’s not the important part – and then proceeded to apologise for it as if he’d somehow broken the rules of their correspondence.

 

 

   He didn’t, in Loki’s opinion.

 

 

   It’s one thing to just talk, it’s another thing to be reminded that the person you’re talking to thinks your eyes are pretty and occasionally dwells on the subject.

 

 

   A pleasant thing, Loki feels.

 

 

   Loki did inform Steve thusly – with a rather less eloquent reply of ‘ _That’s very sweet of you, you don’t need to apologise for that_ ,’ – but if he hadn’t been worried that it might be too much too soon, he’d have responded in kind.

 

 

   _Steve does have very pretty eyes..._

 

 

   “What are you doing over there? You look like a happy cat, sunning yourself,” Sigyn’s voice drifts over, on the amused side of accusatory, and Loki sits up a little more to watch her just over the edge of the sofa’s back, smiling.

 

 

   “Nothing. Watching you. You’re looking very lovely today, where are you off to?” he asks, and she pauses in her brushing and turns to look at him directly.

 

 

   “Just out. I have some errands to run. I won’t be back late, don’t worry,” she tells him, going back to what she was doing.

 

 

   “I’m not worried,” Loki replies honestly, tilting his head back to watch the ripples of sunlight play across their ceiling and allowing his vision to drift out of focus.

 

 

   When he raises his hands, it looks as though he can catch the little puddles of luminance, as though it’s shining through his skin.

 

 

   It’s beautiful.

 

 

   “You’re not worried, are you? About anything. You’re happy today...” Sigyn says softly, her footsteps approaching.

 

 

   “I’m so pleased for you, sweetheart,” she continues, leaning on the sofa and looking down at him, smiling.

 

 

   She’s so radiant Loki has to blink, and she grabs one of his hands and kisses the back of it.

 

 

   “What’s all this about, hm? What’s got you purring and batting your paws in the air?”

 

 

   “Nothing,” Loki says coyly,

 

 

   “Everything’s fine.”

 

 

   “Well maybe that’s it,” Sigyn suggests,

 

 

   “If I leave you here on your own, are you going to be okay?”

 

 

   “I’ll be fine,” Loki insists, sitting up properly and crossing his legs.

 

 

   “As long as you’re sure.”

 

 

   Sigyn kisses his cheek and then walks to the door, sweeping her hair over the collar of her coat.

 

 

   “Text me if you need anything,” she calls, and Loki nods.

 

 

   “And you. Love you!”

 

 

   Loki can hear her ‘ _I love you too_ ’ echoing down the hall as she opens the door and leaves, locking it behind her.

 

 

   For a moment their sun-kissed apartment feels a little empty, but then Loki rises and brushes himself off, and adjourns to the bathroom.

 

 

   Today, he can face the mirror.

 

 

   Today, it doesn’t bother him at all.

 

 

   Nothing from the jut of his elbow to the angle of his hip upsets him today, and by the time the bathtub’s full, Loki’s striking poses and snapping his fingers at his erstwhile tormentor.

 

 

   He places his phone very carefully on the little table next to the bathtub where it’ll be safe and within reach should he require its services, and then sinks into the water with a blissful sigh.

 

 

   He lies there, warm and happy, thinking nothing at all and enjoying this rarest of things, when a single, pure desire lances through him.

 

 

   _Loki wants to share this feeling with someone_.

 

 

   It takes a little longer for the rest of this sensation to drift through and anchor itself within him, but once it has, another follows.

 

 

   _Loki wants to share this with **Steve**_.

 

 

   And not just because he wants to show Steve that he’s capable of being happy – that’s something Loki would usually think, and build on, and obsess over until it ate away at any will he has to do anything at all and finally simply crippled him with anxiety that all would go badly – no.

 

 

   Loki wants to share this with Steve because right now, this unusually clear contentment seems like something he should be experiencing with someone he cares for.

 

 

   It makes him writhe a little in private glee to think it to himself, and suddenly he can’t contain it any longer.

 

 

   He’s up and out and drying off before he’s completely done thinking it through, and the phone’s in his hand before he’s even considered getting dressed.

 

 

   The first text writes itself, it seems, Loki’s damp fingertips simply the instruments of its expression, and Loki barely sees it before he’s sent it, the network of communications ensuring the message,

 

 

   ‘ _I’d like to see you. Is that possible?_ ’ ends up on Steve Rogers’ phone, wherever he may be, before Loki’s even reached his room yet.

 

 

   Inspired by his own actions, and inflamed by his own boldness, Loki is torso-deep in his wardrobe trying to find something to wear when it strikes him that he should perhaps be more specific in communicating his situation, and quickly adds,

 

 

   ‘ _Sigyn’s not here_ , _you could come over._ ’

 

 

   It’s not subtle, it’s not clever, but it’s direct and non-suggestive, and Loki is pleased with it.

 

 

   So pleased and animated is he, that he throws on a pair of black jeans and a plain, neatly ironed white shirt that he doesn’t bother to button all the way or tuck in, and pads through to the hallway to look at himself in the well-lit mirror Sigyn was using just before she left.

 

 

   He looks... healthy. Luminous. No shadows beneath his eyes, still-wet hair curling around his ears and neck.

 

 

   Loki hasn’t felt this at peace with the way he looks in a very long time. It feels unreal and unfamiliar, and he spends a few long minutes just staring at himself, wondering when the hatred is going to overwhelm him, or when the broken voices of the past are going to start filtering through his defences.

 

 

   He jumps when his phone gives off a loud, ecstatic peal to indicate he has a message, and he opens it immediately, moving away from the hall and into the living room, enjoying how the floor is warmer under the soles of his bare feet in those areas directly illuminated by the sun streaming through the windows.

 

 

   The message is from Steve, and Loki is not entirely surprised to read,

 

 

   ‘ _I’d really like to, but I don’t know if I can make it. I’m in town for an appointment._ ’

 

 

   Of course, Steve has a life. He has things going on, it would be unreasonable to expect otherwise.

 

 

   Still, Loki refuses to let go of this.

 

 

   He wants to see Steve, and Steve should know about it. If he’s simply not able to join Loki, then that’s all well and good, but perhaps, just maybe Loki can persuade Steve to try and make a little time, if at all possible.

 

 

   His reply is simple, to the point.

 

 

   ‘ _That’s unfortunate. I honestly do want to see you. It doesn’t have to be for long_.’

 

 

   Loki knows he’s grasping at straws here.

 

 

   He’s quite sure that if Steve were able to make it happen, he’d have considered that before he responded and told Loki so. Steve has things together well enough to know what he does and does not have time for, Loki is certain.

 

 

   It’s just such a shame...

 

 

   Loki throws himself on to the sofa once more, idly perusing old text messages as he awaits a reply, and he flexes his toes as he dwells on how pleasant it would be, to lie here, waiting for Steve to knock on the door...

 

 

   Loki wonders whether he’d hurry over or take the time to avoid a potential asthma attack. Whether he'd open the door to a flushed and panting Steve who quite obviously wanted to see Loki as badly as Loki wanted to see him.

 

 

   Loki wonders whether Steve’s asthma has improved even further since they last spoke of it.

 

 

   Of course, that leads him to recall the last time they kissed, and while it’s an upsetting memory, Loki can’t help thinking that surely a new memory can be created – a better one.

 

 

   Loki could happily kiss Steve on sight in the sunlit hallway of this place and never regret it for a moment, the way he feels right now.

 

 

   It’s while he’s imagining that – wondering whether Steve’s hair will spark a sweeter gold than Sigyn’s in the light – that his phone peals again.

 

 

   ‘ _I’m sorry – I really wish I could but I don’t think I can make it work. Could we reschedule?_ ’

 

 

   Loki believes he can almost hear Steve saying it as he reads the words – he can certainly see Steve’s regretful, apologetic expression if he closes his eyes, and he sighs, a hint of melancholy tingeing his mood.

 

 

   Another time.

 

 

   Another time, it’ll have to be.

 

 

   Now Loki knows – and it’s a secret, warming knowledge – that when he is at his very best, he thinks of sharing it with Steve.

 

 

   Now there’s something he can’t wait to tell Sigyn when she gets home.

 

 

   He wavers between expressing regret that he and Steve will have to wait a little while yet to form that new memory, and something simple in the vein of the rest of their exchange, and finally settles on,

 

 

   ‘ _Of course. Just tell me when._ ’

 

 

   The ceiling is still dancing, and Loki still regrets nothing, still feels warm all the way through, but it’s not until Sigyn returns that he realises what the funny, niggling thing hiding behind the rest of it is.

 

 

   It’s when Sigyn drops her bag by the door and comes over and throws her arms around him that Loki can finally grasp it, and he can’t help immediately giving voice to it – wanting to share this as well, if not with Steve since he can’t be here, but with Sigyn at the very least.

 

 

   “Sweetheart, have you been lying here since I left?” she asks, concerned and drawing back to cast a quick eye over him, pushing her fingers through his still-damp curls,

 

 

   “Oh, you’ve changed – did you take a bath?”

 

 

   Loki just smiles at her, beatific, and she sharpens her gaze and demands,

 

 

   “What? Did something happen while I was gone?”

 

 

   “Yes,” Loki replies at once, thrumming with the secret he’s about to tell her.

 

 

   “Well, what was it? You look even happier than when I left, what’s going on?”

 

 

   Loki props himself up on an elbow and reaches out to stroke back her hair.

 

 

   “I asked Steve to come over,” he divulges, and Sigyn emits a strange, shrieking cry that she immediately stifles with both hands.

 

 

   “He couldn’t, he was busy, but I did it,” Loki continues, just thrilled to finally have an audience for this,

 

 

   “And I’m going to do it again.”

 

 

   “Oh, sweetheart,” Sigyn says from behind her fingers, eyes wide, surprise and pleasure shining from them,

 

 

   “Oh, I’m so proud of you!”

 

 

   She removes her hands and reaches out to hug him tightly, and asks, pressing him close,

 

 

   “When are you two seeing each other?”

 

 

   “Oh, we’ll work it out,” Loki replies, and he almost can’t believe he’s saying that, or that it’s true.

 

 

   Sigyn has tears in her eyes when she pulls away, hands smoothing down Loki’s shirt and finally finding his and twining their fingers together.

 

 

   “You will,” she says firmly,

 

 

   “I know you will.”

 

 

   And that’s the secret.

 

 

   Loki knows it, too.

 

 

   For once, everything is beautiful, and nothing hurts.

 

 

   Especially Loki.

 

 

 


End file.
